Landsat 9 Atlas V Centaur Lift and Mate

Preparations are underway to lift the United Launch Alliance Centaur second stage for NASA’s Landsat 9 mission into the Vertical Integration Facility at Space Launch Complex 3 at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, on July 15, 2021. The Centaur will be attached to the top of the Atlas V booster. The Landsat 9 mission will launch atop the Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg in September 2021. The launch is being managed by NASA’s Launch Services Program based at Kennedy Space Center, America’s multiuser spaceport. 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.