How the Shutdown Will Affect One Quiet, Crucial Set of Satellites

[Commentary] The Landsat program has collected satellite data about the surface of the Earth since 1972. Landsat 7 and 8, the two satellites still operational, will “continue mission-essential operations,” the US Geological Survey announced. This means they’ll sense the Earth — which, since they’re already up in orbit, is relatively cheap for the government — and beam those data down to Earth. Once on Earth, the data will be archived by the United States Geological Survey. It won’t be processed into the kind of data that scientists and businesses are used to working with, though, until after the government restarts. The data may also not be available at all online until then, too. The Landsat program is the oldest continuously-operated program of its type, anywhere. Its satellites have created a precious and irreplaceable archive, and to sever the continuity of that archive would be a tremendous loss for science.