New NASA, USGS funding continues RIT partnership with Landsat

RIT researchers have been a partner with Landsat projects for decades, and a group is now helping the program prepare for its next iteration with Landsat Next.

Matthew Montanaro, a researcher in the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, received funding from NASA for Landsat systems support. Research faculty member Aaron Gerace and researcher Rehman Eon will serve as co-principal investigators to enhance calibration, validation, and uncertainty characterization of Landsat thermal sensors and archived data, funded by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Both projects build on former RIT work and are helping Landsat advance in the future with Landsat Next.

Landsat is a NASA/USGS program that began in 1972 and provides the longest continuous space-based record of Earth’s land in existence. Data from Landsat gives information essential for making informed decisions about Earth’s resources and environment.

Landsat Next is set to launch in the early 2030s and will bring the program into new territory. Instead of just one satellite, like all previous versions, Landsat Next will consist of three identical satellites. The new configuration will greatly improve both the temporal revisit time and the resolution, giving scientists a more accurate and clearer picture of what is occurring on Earth’s surface.

Montanaro is a deputy instrument scientist for the mission and is responsible for ensuring that the images are correctly acquired by the imaging sensors and are downlinked and processed into usable images for users.

“My work is mostly on the imaging instrument side, involving flight hardware and software, and pre-flight and on-orbit characterization testing,” explained Montanaro. “Much of that involves close coordination with the instrument vendor to ensure that the ultimate image meets requirements.”

While NASA is responsible for getting the instrument up into space, USGS is responsible for taking the data and creating products with it. Gerace and Rehman have helped develop a land sensor temperature product. They calibrate it to make sure it’s working correctly and then develop algorithms for it.

“What we’re focused on right now is making sure that Landsat 9 is maintained correctly and then we will  come up with a plan for when Landsat Next gets launched,” said Eon. “There will be a lot more information, and we don’t know what that data will look like.”

Using DIRSIG (Digital Imaging and Remote Sensing Image Generation), the duo can set up simulated environments and create image data to help inform sensor data before Landsat Next is launched. The simulations will check to see if the sensors will receive the correct images. Gerace and Eon are also checking the fidelity of the compression algorithm for Landsat Next because with more data from more satellites, they need to make sure the data gets transferred to Earth without being distorted.

“The DIRSIG tool is really, really important,” said Gerace. “It’s tailored for this exact application. It’s been refined over the decades at RIT, and it’s a big reason why we keep getting funding from NASA.”

DIRSIG was developed at RIT in the late 1980s. The university has a working history with Landsat dating back to 1981 when NASA funded RIT’s first major research grant that helped establish the imaging science program.

Gerace and Montanaro have received previous grants to work with Landsat 8 and Landsat 9. In 2019, they were honored by the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation with the Academic Achievement Award with their problem-solving work on Landsat 8.

All three researchers are graduates of the imaging science Ph.D. program; Gerace and Eon both worked on Landsat projects while they were students. Montanaro works closely with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Their combined history and experience with Landsat will help make the next chapter a success, and continue the RIT-Landsat relationship to give future students similar opportunities. Landsat data is crucial to help researchers study many areas, including agriculture and food security, disaster management, energy resources, urban development, and wildland fires.

“The 50-plus-year archive of Landsat enables studies of changes on the Earth’s surface,” said Montanaro. “Landsat Next will carry on this imaging task and extend the archive for at least the next decade.”