Landsat 9 Boat Tail Arrival

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V payload fairing boattail for NASA’s Landsat 9 mission is transported by flatbed truck to the Horizontal Integration Facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, on June 21, 2021. The boattail will shield the spacecraft from particles in the retrorocket plume during separation from the payload fairing. The Landsat 9 mission will launch atop a ULA Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg in September 2021. The launch is being managed by NASA’s Launch Services Program based at Kennedy Space Center. The Landsat 9 satellite will continue the nearly 50-year legacy of previous Landsat missions. It will monitor key natural and economic resources from orbit. Landsat 9 is managed by the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The satellite will carry two instruments: the Operational Land Imager 2, which collects images of Earth’s landscapes in visible, near infrared and shortwave infrared light, and the Thermal Infrared Sensor 2, which measures the temperature of land surfaces. Like its predecessors, Landsat 9 is a joint mission between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey.