Landsat 9 Fairing Alignment and Sample Preps

Inside the Integrated Processing Facility at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, United Launch Alliance (ULA) technicians move the launch vehicle adapter for the ULA Atlas V rocket for NASA’s Landsat 9 satellite on June 22, 2021. Landsat 9 is scheduled to launch atop the Atlas V from Vandenberg in September 2021. The launch is being managed by NASA’s Launch Services Program based at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Landsat 9 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. It 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.