Landsat 2 is the second satellite of the Landsat program. The spacecraft
originally carried a designation of ERTS-B (Earth Resource Technology Satellite
B) but was renamed &Landsat 2& prior to its launch on January 22, 1975. Despite
having a design life of one year, Landsat 2 operated for over seven years,
finally ceasing operations on February 25, 1982.
As in the case of its predecessor Landsat 1, the satellite's payload included
two remote sensing instruments, the Return Beam Vidicon (RBV) and the
Multi-Spectral Scanner (MSS). The specifications for these instruments were
identical to those of the instruments carried on Landsat 1. (This was not the
case for Landsat 3, which added a short-lived thermal band to the MSS
instrument.) The data acquired by the MSS was considered more scientifically
useful than the data returned from the RBV, which was rarely used and
considered only for engineering evaluation purposes.
[Summary provided by NASA.]
Group: Platform_Details
Entry_ID: LANDSAT-2
Group: Platform_Identification
Platform_Category: Earth Observation Satellites
Platform_Series_or_Entity: LANDSAT
Short_Name: LANDSAT-2
End_Group
Group: Platform_Associated_Instruments
Short_Name: MSS
Short_Name: RBV
End_Group
Group: Orbit
Orbit_Altitude: 900 km
Orbit_Inclination: 99.2 degree
Equator_Crossing: 9:42 AM mean local time
Period: 103 minutes
Repeat_Cycle: 18 days
Orbit_Type: LEO > Low Earth Orbit > Polar Sun-Synchronous
End_Group
Creation_Date: 2007-02-01
Online_Resource: http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/about/L2_td.html
Sample_Image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/39/Landsat2.jpg/200px-Landsat2.jpg
Group: Platform_Logistics
Launch_Date: 1975-01-22
Launch_Site: Vandenberg AFB
Design_Life: 1 Year
Primary_Sponsor: NASA
Primary_Sponsor: USGS
End_Group
End_Group (en)