Key Technological Challenges of the Earth Resources Technology Satellite Program

Abstract

The first Earth Resources Technology Satellite was launched on July 23, 1972, and by this day in October has completed more than 1100 orbits of the Earth. The spacecraft is observing 200 scenes per day and transmitting data to three prime ground stations in the United States and one in Canada. This data is being processed at NASA’s ground data processing facility for subsequent distribution on a worldwide basis. The job of making ERTS successful has required meeting and solving a number of key technological challenges. Because time does not permit discussing all of them, we have selected four major topics for today’s meeting: orbit and coverage parameters, spectral characteristics, system performance and photographic interpretation and information extraction.