14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at NASA and the US Geological Survey (USGS) are proud to announce that their joint mission, the Landsat-8 Earth-observations satellite, has just turned 1 in low-Earth orbit. The spacecraft was launched on February 11, 2013, and finally began its mission on May 30, 2013.
At that time, NASA gave over controls of the mission – then called the Landsat Data Continuity Mission – over to the USGS. Since then, Landsat-8 has provided a wealth of data for its mission controllers, many of which have been stitched together to create the image above.
A much larger version of the image can be downloaded from this link, boasting a resolution of 16,500x11,000 pixels. The dataset contains a wide variety of images, collected with several instruments aboard the spacecraft. The Landsat system has been surveying Earth for more than 42 years.
Like all other Landsat satellites, the spacecraft collects images in 185-kilometer (115-mile) wide strips, combining them with each pass above the Earth. Weather conditions such as available sunlight and cloud covers change with each pass, hence the color differences you see above.