Landsat 9 Office Opens at Goddard; Procurement Decisions Loom

摘要

The program office for Landsat 9, an upgraded rebuild of the $850 million Landsat 8 that went into service two years ago, is finally up and running at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. But major procurement decisions for the next in the long series of land imaging satellites may not be made until fall, a senior NASA official said April 21. NASA Earth Science Director Mike Freilich told SpaceNews April 21 the agency wants to decide on a procurement approach "as soon as possible and no later than the end of this fiscal year," which concludes Sept. 30. "Those are the very issues and decisions that the project is examining now." Landsat 9 will be a near copy of Landsat 8, which launched in February 2013 on a five-year mission but carries enough fuel to last at least 10 years.