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We don’t have sufficient Landsat coverage, Landsat 5 can fail at any moment
Clark 10 (Stephen, Spaceflight Now, Jan. 13, http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1001/13landsat/ accessed 7/4/110 CJQ
The nearly 26-year-old Landsat 5 remote sensing satellite has cheated death once again, but Earth scientists will have to wait three more years for a fresh spacecraft to meet all their research needs. One of Landsat 5's radio transmitters responsible for downlinking science imagery failed in December, but in a remarkable turn of fortune, another radio declared failed almost 23 years ago has been unexpectedly revived. "Lo and behold, it works," said Bruce Quirk, chief of the United States Geological Survey's land remote sensing program. Science operations could resume this week, according to Quirk. "It's like taking your car and driving into the garage, then coming back 23 years later and starting it up," Quirk said. "For it to work like this, I think it's really remarkable. I wasn't giving it a big chance of working, but Landsat 5 is kind of like the (Energizer) bunny -- it just keeps running and running." Landsat 5 was launched on March 1, 1984, on a three-year mission to continue the Landsat program's legacy of collecting Earth science data for a wide range of applications. "We have brought it from the brink of death and back to life so many times over the last seven years," said Kristi Kline, Landsat program manager at the USGS Earth Resources Science and Observation Center in Sioux Falls, S.D. "It's just amazing what our flight operations team and our engineers are able to do with that spacecraft." Landsat 5 has also recently struggled with other problems, including an August incident that sent the spacecraft tumbling out of control. The satellite's multi-spectral scanner is also not working. "It's the oldest spacecraft of its type still functioning," Kline said. "We've certainly gotten our money's worth out of it."
The future of Landsat is in doubt, both 5 and 7 could fail at any moment
Wigbels et al 8 (Lyn, Senior Fellow/Assistant Professor at the Center for Aerospace Policy Research at George Mason University, a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Space Initiatives Program, G. Ryan Faith, adjunct fellow at CSIS, Vincent Sabathier, senior associate with the CSIS Technology and Public Policy Program, CSIS, July, http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/080725_wigbels_earthobservation_web.pdf, accessed 7-6-11, JMB)
In the United States, Landsat satellites have never been considered a fully operational capability, and no single US. government agency has had the responsibility for meeting US needs for operational moderate-resolution ground imaging. Over the years, many attempts were made to commercialize the provision of moderate-resolution ground imaging data, but a viable commercial option never emerged. Consequently, the United States has been unable to adequately address the expected gap in U.S. moderate-resolution land imaging data. Technical problems with the current Landsat 5 and 7 satellites are expected to result in their unavailability prior to the 2011 launch of the LDCM. In addition, there currently is no successor mission to LDCM nor a replacement satellite should LDCM fail at launch or early in its operational life. The new National Land Imaging Program provides a focal point in the US government for understanding land imaging requirements and planning and budgeting for missions to meet these requirements. USGS has begun working within the Department of the Interior to begin to migrate the current Land Remote Sensing Program into the National Land Imaging Program. However, the Interior Department did not receive additional funding last year to implement these new responsibilities, and only $2 million was requested for this by the administration for FY 2009. USGS is currently coordinating and promoting the uses of land imaging data within the Department of the Interior.
Now Key – Delays Kill the Program
Landsat delay crushes the program – narrow flight window
Brinton 3/14 (Turner, Space News, 2011, http://www.spacenews.com/civil/110314-nasa-racing-launch-next-landsat-mission-before-2013.html, accessed 7-5-11, JMB)
NASA and its industry partners are racing to complete development and launch the next Landsat imaging spacecraft by the end of 2012 to avoid launch range conflicts with several high-priority national missions. The U.S. space agency is formally committed to having the $941 million Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) ready to launch no later than June 2013. But the program has long been managing to a more aggressive December 2012 target to minimize the chances of the current Landsat craft going dark before LDCM reaches orbit. NASA contracted with United Launch Alliance of Denver in 2009 to launch LDCM in December 2012 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on an Atlas 5 rocket. Because the Atlas 5 manifest is crowded in 2013 with Defense Department and intelligence community launches, NASA cannot afford to miss the 2012 launch date, according to Steve Volz, the NASA Earth Science Division’s associate director for flight programs. “We’re treating this almost as a planetary launch window,” Volz said. If LDCM is not ready to launch on time, it may have to wait to launch until late 2013. Not only would this increase the mission’s costs, it also would cause the satellite to miss the spring growing season in the northern hemisphere, an important objective for the five-year mission, Volz said. Both Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 are projected to last beyond spring 2013, but the likelihood of one or both failing increases with each passing month, he said. The most challenging piece of LDCM development has been the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) being built in-house by Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The sensor — a late edition to the LDCM project — has been in fabrication for about a year, and a number of technical issues have left it with little schedule margin, Volz said in a March 10 interview. One of the issues concerned circuit boards inside TIRS’ main electronics box. Although the boards had been used in earlier flight projects, testing discovered that they were not meeting LDCM’s thermal stability requirements. Fixing the problem cost $3.8 million, according to a March 3 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office
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