Eyes in the Sky: KBR and the Landsat Program

In this episode, host John Arnold sits down with Doug Jaton, program manager for KBR’s Technical Support Services Contract at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earth Resources, Observation and Science (EROS) Center. Listen along as they talk about KBR’s role at EROS, specifically with the Landsat program — the longest and most comprehensive space-based record of the planet’s surface — and as they discuss what Landsat is, how it works and why it matters for the entire planet.

Transcript

IN ORBIT: A KBR PODCAST

Episode 7

“Eyes in the Sky: KBR and the Landsat Program”

INTRODUCTION

John Arnold

Hello. I'm John, and this is, In Orbit.

Greetings everyone, and thank you for listening along. Once again, this is John Arnold. I'm happy to be back with you all today. I am flying solo on hosting duties, but we want to give a big shout out to host Lubna Salim, who's celebrating a birthday this week.

Presented by KBR, In Orbit is a podcast for everyone, inside or outside our business, that talks about what's happening around the world and in our various industries, and that keeps us all connected and in each other's orbits. And speaking of orbit, we've got a really interesting episode lined up for you today about the work KBR is doing over at the United States Geological Survey's Earth Resources, Observation, and Science Center, or EROS, and specifically what we do with the Landsat Program.

Now, “What is Landsat?” I hear you asking. Well, it's only the longest space-based record of earth in existence. For 50 years now, the Landsat program has been using satellites to gather images of earth from space, then collecting that data, processing it and organizing it for public use. Those images help scientists and researchers around the world better understand how our planet is changing over time. They also crucially help us monitor and address global issues such as deforestation, melting polar ice caps, disappearing coastlines, droughts, wildfires, urban sprawl — you know, all the terrible stuff — and also to monitor how we're using our natural resources. But enough for me, let's hear from the expert.

What you're about to listen to is a conversation recorded back at the end of September, in which I had the absolute pleasure of speaking with Doug Jaton, the program manager for KBR's Technical Support Services Contract at EROS. I'd like to apologize in advance for a couple of minor glitches in Doug's audio. We were experiencing some slight technical difficulties. However, I assure you those little blips don't detract from the excellent content of the interview, in which Doug explains what Landsat is, what it does and why it matters for you, me and the rest of the world. Let's listen now.

TRANSITION

John Arnold

Joining me today is Doug Jaton. Doug is the program manager for KBR's Technical Support Services Contract. That's with the U.S. Geological Survey's Earth Resources, Observation and Science Center, which is in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and we'll call it EROS — that's what it's known as. Doug is a South Dakota native and has served in the program manager role since 2013 but has been at EROS for the past 22 years. Doug, thank you so much for talking with me today.

Doug Jaton

Thank you. It’s nice to get a chance to talk about the great work the KBR team is doing here in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

John Arnold

Oh, that's awesome. Well, I'm thrilled to have you with us to talk about some pretty interesting stuff. I wonder, first of all, if you just give us some background — what EROS is and about the work that you and the KBR TSSC team are doing there.

Doug Jaton

So, as explained, KBR has a Technical Support Services Contract for the USGS EROS' Science Center. EROS Science Center is really the largest operational center as part of the USGS. The United States Geological Survey is the bureau of the Department of Interior, and really the role of the EROS mission is to provide the driving science — mission is to contribute to the understanding of a change in earth. It does that by being the world's largest civilian archive of remotely land sense data. So we have a large archive going back well over 50 years, and we use that to become an authoritative provider of land change science, information and knowledge, really to curate the long-term data record of the USGS land archive. And that puts us in a position to become a leader in understanding how changes in land use, land cover and condition affect people in nature. So that's the driving goal.

John Arnold

And when you say data, primarily, you're talking about imagery, correct?

Doug Jaton

We're predominantly talking about satellite imagery and land remote sense data. So as we get into this a little bit later, it's really a combination of historically aerial data, satellite imagery, and then more recently, some UAS — un-crewed aircraft systems.

Some of the primary functions we do at EROS through the Technical Support Services Contract is to acquire, collect, bring imagery to EROS, analyze, make corrections to those, and then add that land imagery to the archive at EROS So, really keep building on the long-term data record. And then at the back end of that, we have all sorts of systems and science applications that are doing land change monitoring, and they create higher level science products that help the policy holders and the public understand what's going on at the surface of the earth. Ultimately, at the contract level, we provide the engineering, science, IT and operation staff, who then design, develop and operate 24 by 7 satellite ground system, archive this data and create the higher order science data sets that EROS depends on to do their mission.

John Arnold

Okay. That's awesome.

Doug Jaton

From a sizing perspective, EROS has about 600 staff total across the center. About 110 of those are government staff, leadership, science, science directors that comes from the USGS. Our KBR TSSC team made up of KBR staff and our really valuable teammates, about 440 staff on contract right now. So it's a large team.

Sense of scale — we talked about imagery, satellite data, aerial image data sets. We have a massive archive. There is an archive acronym known as the National Land Remote Sensing Data Archive, NLRSDA, which I think is one of the better NASA acronyms in the world, better government acronyms in the world.

John Arnold

Definitely.

Doug Jaton

Now is this over 65 petabytes of data. That's — 65 petabytes of data is over 65 million gigabytes of information.

John Arnold

Good night. That's a lot.

Doug Jaton

So, it's a ton of data. EROS really is best known and is responsible for the Landsat satellite mission. Landsat is a nearly 50-year collaborative in between NASA and USGS. Started way back with Landsat 1 satellite that was launched in 1972. Since 1972, there's been at least one satellite up at any given time. Currently, EROS is flying two satellites, Landsat 7 and Landsat 8. Each of these are on a 16-day polar orbit. Two of them up in the air in space allow us to get eight-day repeat coverage that really offers very unique global scale seasonal coverage of all the land masses.

Again, back to the NASA/USGS collaboration. NASA is ultimately responsible for building the spacecrafts and getting them launched. So, they bring the hard work to the space. Generally, these spacecraft — Landsat satellites are made up of the spacecraft and two instruments. One of the instruments is measuring optical spectral bands. Think in terms of light reflectance — what's being reflected back from the earth. And the other one's generally been a thermal infrared that really measures temperature — surface temperature. So, all of those are common to the satellite images going back to over the last 50 years. While NASA builds a spacecraft, USGS, and a big chunk of our TSSC KBR team, is responsible to build the overall ground system at EROS. So that's really where KBR comes to bear in this conversation.

So the USGS has a flight operations side. They have two mission operations contracts at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in [Washington] D.C. that really fly the spacecraft from a NASA perspective. Shout out here to the NASA KBR team. There is a small KBR team at Goddard that flies the Landsat 7 spacecraft. It's not TSSC scope, but we interact with them quite a bit. So we want to say hi to our KBR friends at NASA Godard.

More on the TSCC side of things — for the ground system at EROS, we really maintain the Landsat ground networks. Think of those as ground stations — data that brings spacecraft data down to the ground. And then all that data comes to EROS, where we maintain the data processing, the archive, and then all the storage and exploitation and distribution of the science products after launch.

John Arnold

Gotcha. And you're currently gearing up for a launch, right?

Doug Jaton

Yeah. As you noted, Landsat 7 is near its end of scheduled life. It has been up since 1999, and it is, frankly, out of fuel. Like most vehicles eventually run out of fuel, this thing's literally running out fuel by the end of the calendar year. Landsat 9 has been designed and built to take its place.

John Arnold

Awesome. What kind of fuel do satellites use, Doug?

Doug Jaton

It's a hydrazone kind of fuel they'll use as a propellant. So, really, in order to maintain these polar orbits, every so often gravity and drag will kick in and the spacecraft will have to do a burn maneuver to move back up into their polar orbit. So after many years of these many small burns they eventually run out of fuel.

John Arnold

Gotcha. So, I was reading earlier today in preparation for this about all of the different satellites that are in space, whether they're operational or not. Can you talk to us a little bit about space junk? What happens when these things do burn out of fuel if they're not repurposed?

Doug Jaton

Yeah, that's a good question. Recall, I mentioned that the USGS has two mission operations centers. They'll colloquially call them the MOC. The MOCs, that have flight ops team staff that are flying Landsat 7. And I mentioned earlier, KBR is flying that spacecraft. They have another MOC flight ops team staff for Landsat 8, soon to be 9, that are flying as well. One of their main functions, in addition to the recurring maneuvers to stay on orbit that I mentioned to earlier — the burns to stay on that polar orbit. These MOCs working with the air force are constantly monitoring space debris and projections of space debris in orbit. So there is a technical interface between the MOCs and the Air Force, where they get alerted that there's a potential near flyby — let's not use the word collision — but a potential near flyby here. And in many cases, both at L8 and for Landsat 7, the MOCs have to take preventative action by either lowering or raising their altitude. So, these spacecraft will temporarily deviate from their orbit to avoid a space object, and then come back on for routine science processing. But all these combined over many years end up consuming all the fuel. Which is, from a KBR perspective, which is okay, because we’re constantly building new ground systems. So this is part of the life.

John Arnold

Well, you've mentioned Landsat a couple of times. Why don't you tell us a little bit about Landsat and why it's so important? Because it really does touch a lot of different areas.

Doug Jaton

Landsat is the world's longest, most widely used and cited land remote sensing dataset. It really helps the world, USGS, and other users understand and manage natural human-induced landscape change via a multitude of land, water and natural resource management applications. It's unique that it measures at 30 meters. It's able to measure manmade change and natural change at a global scale.

John Arnold

That's incredible.

Doug Jaton

It's got a very unique niche within the remote-sensing community going back 50 years.

John Arnold

Wow, that's awesome.

Doug Jaton

You asked about the utilization of this data. The USGS has identified over 15 primary societal benefit areas. These are major areas of human activity and economical and/or emergency operations or human conditions, if that make sense. Some of the bigger users that make sense are agriculture and forestry. Probably the biggest uses — worldwide agriculture can monitor crops and crop status; forestry, as you might expect, particularly with fires more recently, the health of the forest, the state of fire and predicting where there's going to be activity is a big thing; the actual resource management, all those functions in ag and forestry.

Water, water quality, water drought, water utilization has been really popular. I've been at EROS for 22 years now. In the last 10 or 15 years, water and water monitoring has become a really significant user or application of Landsat data. Overall land use, resource planning. Landsat is used to monitor land cover, and therefore, land use. Is it ag? Is it urban? And what kind of use is going on? So those trends, over time, inform policy makers at all levels of national governments. In addition to that, carbon assessment, climate-change science. Landsat brings the land-cover and the land-use applications to the climate change to the world. So that's our contribution to climate change.

John Arnold

That's incredible. So you've mentioned these societal benefits and how experts are using that data that's being collected. Can you talk a little bit about that in practical terms for a few of those?

Doug Jaton

Again, back to its unique position as a 50-year data set in the remote-sensing world, there really is nothing else that can replace it. So it's truly a global data set, has very wide application area is that I touched on earlier. One way to think about it, something that the public could understand, is Landsat was one of first datasets ingested by Google

John Arnold

Oh, okay.

Doug Jaton

So when you go into Google Maps, you open that up, you see the globe, you start zooming in, you're dealing with Landsat data.

John Arnold

Amazing.

Doug Jaton

Back to this global data set that can be used for all sorts of applications. From an agriculture and land use, from a monitoring example, the USGS maintains a well-known data set called the National Land Cover Database, NLCD, and really, an example of what it's used for is the crop land data layer. So the U.S. Department of Ag uses Landsat to map crop types every year, project and monitor global scale harvest, all the way to the back end, where they're using it for crop insurance and compliance fraud.

John Arnold

Oh, wow.

Doug Jaton

When someone plants the field and puts a claim in, we can use Landsat imagery to say, "Hey, that person did or didn't plant something," right? So it's been great as a compliance fraud tool as well.

John Arnold

That's fascinating.

Doug Jaton

Everything to sustainable farming. So I mentioned water and ag. The intersect here, a good example of the USGS, is Gallo Winery. A lot of people like wine. So Gallo Winery in Central California reduced their irrigated water use by over 25% by really using a Landsat-based evapotranspiration, which is just a way of measuring agriculture or plants' water consumption. So we're starting to see more use of the farming community using Landsat imagery for sustainable farming, which is very exciting.

John Arnold

That's incredible.

Doug Jaton

From a forestry perspective, forestry is a really large use of Landsat data as well. Land fire — I think we've all seen the amount of fires in the Western states over the last couple of years. It seems like the pace is increasing. We use Landsat to maintain and update fire danger maps, really map the state of the forest in terms of fuels, vegetation loading, which gives you an insight into the health of the forest. All that data feeds into fire-modeling data sets. So the modeling kicks out things that I think the public would understand. There's maps that reflect fire dangers, whether your part of the forest is susceptible or not susceptible to a burn. So that really helps a risk assessment.

And the other big activity we do out of the EROS Center is only really satellite data can be used for mapping and monitoring burn severities for every fire within the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity program. So from a global scale, we're mapping fires worldwide.

The other area that you mentioned about is water and water utilization. Really, it feeds into the whole land ag, natural resources management decision tools. But one product I think that public could understand is U.S. drought maps. We've all seen the U.S. drought maps that show whether you're dry, very dry, extremely dry in the droughts. Really, we process that data at EROS. The KBR TSSC team does. It goes into a product that's put up by the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, the drought-monitor tool. That's really a weekly map that gets a lot out attention across the world. So this might show my age, John, but when I started, it was in the USA Today paper. So I had to read it in the paper. Now it's all gone to the internet, of course.

And I mentioned this earlier — evapotranspiration, ET, measurements, really measure vegetation and crop consumption, the expiration of water from plants. It's really used across the U.S. to manage irrigation across the states and helps manage reservoirs in Western U.S. states. Colorado River Basin and Klamath River Basin are the two big ones that come to mind. So we all, I think, have heard stories how the water reservoirs are coming down. So water rights is a big deal, and Landsat's a nice compliance tool for that as well.

John Arnold

Excellent. That's awesome.

Doug Jaton

So far, we mentioned about agriculture and forestry purposes as well. There are other human-related activities that I want to talk about for a second. Now, we mentioned climate change earlier, that we provide the baseline of what's changing on the land-cover side. Recently, we've had some great products that KBR teams have made here at TSSC. Landsat thermal data is used to study urban heat islands and really to map heat vulnerability across 50 of the larger states [sic] in the U.S. So we have just completed mapping 50 cities' hotspots. The goal there is to save lives. I think the data we saw from EPA is that over 8,000 heat deaths resulted from '99 to 2010.

John Arnold

Wow.

Doug Jaton

So we want to be able to understand where that's happening and make that available for policy makers to take action with. Related to human conditions, the last one I'll end with is taking care of the public with emergency operations national hazards. Whether it's a hurricane, a fire, a tsunami or a significant multi-state flood, EROS has a role to make this data available to first responders, so the people out the field, they can see the before condition and the after condition. That data is staged up and made available through tools that are built by KBR, and that data's made available through the USGS.

John Arnold

Awesome. It really sounds like so much of what the program makes possible, as far as the societal benefits — that there are lots of tie-ins to KBR's sustainability initiatives. Because protecting the environment, protecting our communities, that all ties back into this. And the data that this program is helping to collect and collate and make available is helping policy makers and first responders and people do their jobs.

Doug Jaton

Absolutely. Can't agree more. Going back to efficiently using natural resources is the name of the game anymore. So the sustainable agriculture and effective management of natural resources, forest and crop lands, really, Landsat has an oversized role in that. So, very happy to support that.

John Arnold

That's amazing. So you, EROS and NASA have a big day coming up. At the end of the month, NASA's going to be launching Landsat 9, which you've mentioned before. You and the KBR TSSC team have been instrumental in the process, and I was wondering if you could walk us through what's been going on in the lead-up to the launch.

Doug Jaton

It's been a long project. The KBR team is pretty excited about the upcoming Landsat 9 launch. I mentioned earlier, the development cycle really starts with NASA building the spacecraft and the instruments. USGS builds a ground system. So our experience is these missions generally take about five years. So we've had teams in place for five full years. So a lot of blood, sweat and tears, and a great dedicated staff, and a great effort to get us to this launch. So we're just about there. We get over the finish line in a couple weeks here.

But for Landsat 9 specifically — Landsat 9, the spacecraft — has two instruments. The spacecraft is being built by NASA Northrop Grumman in Phoenix, Arizona. There are two sensors. A spectral reflecting sensor is the operational land imager. That's being built by Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado. And the second one, that measures temperature, is a thermal infrared radiometer sensor. That tier sensor is built in-house by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in D.C.

So a little shoutout to the NASA KBR teams. I know we have some — each hardware teams at Goddard that have supported that tier's instrument checkout and delivery to the spacecraft. So a little shoutout to our friends at Goddard.

So while NASA's working with these companies to integrate the spacecraft, USGS is building the ground system. So again, our engineers at EROS are responsible for the design, development and operations of the USGS ground system. So as you can see, KBR has system engineers and scientists in our development team — well over a hundred people — who have been supporting the joint NASA/USGS products and maintaining interfaces with the spacecraft teams and instrument teams throughout the U.S., so throughout the last four-year ground system deployment phase.

In fact, as we get ready for Landsat 9 launch in Vandenberg Air Force Base next week, we'll have an engineer up in Gilmore Creek in Alaska to support that launch activity. We'll also have some engineers out at the launch phase in Vandenburg Air Force Base. So the major capabilities of the Landsat ground system that TSSC support supports really fall into two major elements. One is the Landsat ground network element. The Landsat ground network element really is made up of five globally dispersed ground stations. Think of those as big satellite antennas, 10-meter antennas or more, responsible for operational communication with spacecraft and then for downloading the instrument data and all the routing of that data near real time back to the EROS center for science processing. So these five ground stations have been strategically deployed and tested. We've had KBR staff heavily involved, traveled to all of them. They exist at the EROS center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. NASA has a station in Svalbard, Norway. We are leveraging a NOA ground station at Gilmore Creek, right outside Fairbanks, Alaska. And then internationally, we have one in Alice Springs, Australia — in the middle of Australia effectively — and Neustrelitz, Germany, selected to optimize satellite contact time.

John Arnold

That's amazing. All working in coordination together. That's just fantastic.

Doug Jaton

Yeah, in addition to these five primary ground stations, the USGS also maintains and KBR supports what's known as the Landsat International Cooperator Agreements. And what that means is we have about 13 foreign countries in addition to these five ground stations that are also down linking Landsat data. And they're down linking data and using it for their country's unique science and remote sensing application needs. So really it is an international partnership.

John Arnold

Right, right.

Doug Jaton

So while the LGN is bringing data down to the ground, we have another element that's responsible for all of the data processing, the science corrections, and then the archiving and storage and distribution of that data. That's known as the DPAS, data processing archiving storage element. It starts with — really, there's two steps. The elementer is responsible for the ingests of the raw levels, zero science data into the storage systems at EROS. At that point, some of our engineers create initial image processing to apply radiometric and geometric corrections to create accurate level 1 products. And really what these are, level 1 products are products that accurately reflect the spectral radiances measured on the ground and are also geospatially accurate. So the image is at the right place at the right place on the ground.

John Arnold

Gotcha. Gotcha.

Doug Jaton

Then we have science processing systems that use these products for higher level 2 products that really account for atmospheric efforts. So in terms of creating a surface reflectance product and then an observed surface temperature product. So it sees level two products that feed into the science products we discussed earlier in the podcast. One of the big questions we have here, of course, as we near launch, is, is will our system work?

John Arnold

Of course it's going to work!

Doug Jaton

Of course it's going to work! We have great confidence in our teams, but we want to test and verify. So KBR’s completed formal engineering verification and test procedures and processes over the last few years. We want to make sure we're ready for launch readiness and day one operations.

John Arnold

Right.

Doug Jaton

So as part of that, the team's created some wonderful, incredible test simulators to ensure that the spacecraft and instruments are working as expected and that our ground system then can take that data and create these really vital science products we discussed earlier.

One of the more innovative tools that I'm excited for on Landsat 9 is called a hallway ground system, which was really a dedicated rack of hardware that was connected to the actual Landsat 9 spacecraft and instruments while they were being incrementally built and assembled at Northrop Grumman's Gilbert, Arizona, spacecraft factory. And what the hallway ground system really did is it simulates the as-built configuration of three of our key global ground stations. I mentioned Sioux Falls, Svalbard, Norway, and Gilmore Creek of Fairbanks, Alaska. So really from the spacecraft perspective, it acts like it's talking to those three antennas.

John Arnold

That's amazing.

Doug Jaton

It really allowed us in working through the NASA team and the Northrop Grumman team, to continually pull data off while they were building clean rib assembly and incremental fabrication, literally to the system that's sitting out in the hallway, which is why it's called the hallway ground system. So it was from an innovative risk-reduction perspective, it was used to confirm that each of the incremental spacecraft builds were on track. And we were able to catch minor issues or mistakes very early in the build process. The alternative is to wait till everything gets put together after 18 months and then task, right?

John Arnold

Right.

Doug Jaton

So you can start seeing these corrections front and give you much more time to test. And while we're incrementally verifying the successful build of the spacecraft, it's allowing us on the KBR team here at EROS to incrementally test our ground system. Can we ingest the data? Is the outputs of our data system what we expect based on the data coming up the spacecraft? So it really allowed that end to end test and given the format of the data to our ground system, really allows that data to be processed on the ground, giving us great confidence that we're ready for the ground system.

John Arnold

Yeah, it sounds like with something like this, doing your due diligence upfront would be of great importance, and it certainly sounds like you are doing it with this.

Doug Jaton

Being able to test the spacecraft before it flies and getting it perfect is really important. You only get one crack at this, right? So once that's up in space, you're kinda stopped.

John Arnold

Absolutely.

Doug Jaton

So it's been a great risk-reduction accomplishment. In fact, the hallway ground system was so valuable, the NASA and USGS management teams funded us moving the hallway ground system actually out to the launch site. So we actually took the hallway ground system, sent it up to California, and we have engineers out there that actually plug that in to make sure spacecraft was working just as expected right before they put it on the launch vehicle. So gives you insight to the value of that system.

John Arnold

Yeah, absolutely. That's awesome for that team. So let's talk about once Landsat 9 is in orbit, what happens next?

Doug Jaton

Well, so far I mentioned a lot of activities around Landsat development and launch, and that's really only part of the thing. It's a marathon really. So the last five years is getting this to the point we've had a ground system that's built and ready for deploy. Landsat 9 will assume Landsat 7's flight orbit and it'll have a 10-year life cycle. So we've got a lot of work in front of us. The first step we do for Landsat 9 as far as checkout will be on orbit checkout and calibration activities — calibration validation of the instrument sensors. Again, we have to make sure that sensors are accurately measuring what's really happening on the earth's surface. So as get that dialed in and calibrated, so to speak, they will then provide 10 years of 24/7 science operations support.

So before I get into the calibration, I will say Landsat data has a well-earned reputation as being what's known as the gold standard of highly calibrated and accurate or remotely sensed data.

John Arnold

Interesting.

Doug Jaton

Going back all the way through the 50-year archives. So, NASA and USGS has invested in a set of engineers and calibration teams that really make sure these things are dialed in to reflect accurately what's happening on the earth, going back all 50 years.

John Arnold

That's outstanding.

Doug Jaton

In fact, many other remote sensing data sets, satellite images, and even commercial satellites generally use the Landsat archive to kind of register and process their data to it because it's got this gold standard technique reputation to it. So our KBR team supports a world class EROS calibration validation center of excellence team, who really works with a NASA calibration team to monitor and trend the on orbit performance and accuracy of this optical and thermal sensors that as I discussed earlier. Really, that puts us in this position where our KBR staff leaders are really leaders in this field of radiometry and geometry. And radiometry and geometry are really complex terminologies here. We probably don't have time to get into the design aspects of it.

But at a high level, radiometry is really, our engineers use complex algorithms to measure and crack for the amount of light. Again, this is reflected lights from the surface of the earth that are measured by the sensor detectors. Each image is made up of thousands and thousands of pixels. And maybe a simple analogy is think of each reflectance analogy as being a standalone temperature, [inaudible] back to the freezing point and that boiling point. So think about doing that for thousands of those at a time across one imagery going back over 50 years. So that's what these algorithms really do. They let us dial in accurately, what the as-is radiance on the earth is.

John Arnold

Okay, wow. Yeah.

Doug Jaton

So if we got the right reflectance, we got to put it at the right place. So that's where geometry comes. So the geometry engineers maintain complex satellite pointing models. They're using GPS and star trackers for the understanding of the spacecraft and what it's pointing to, then develop algorithms to project this imagery down to an earth model that they maintain. And that earth model accounts for all of the terrain and elevation changes at the surface of the earth. And really it ends up draping these images, pixel imagery, right to the right geospatial spot on the earth. So Landsat's generally within 10 meters of accuracy anywhere on the earth. So again, back to the gold standard of an accurate remote sensing data set, that's really world-class performance.

John Arnold

Yeah, from outer space to within 10 meters, that's not too shabby, huh?

Doug Jaton

That's not too bad. And then from going back to the marathon conversation — we have to maintain that gold standard for the next 10 years. So we have systems and staff that are maintaining 24/7 operations, bringing data down, looking for quality, making sure there's no anomalies. And then our cowbell teams measure sensor performance changes over the life of the mission. So as we know, spacecraft is a very harsh environment. So there's always with all the correction and temperature changes, there's always subtle shifts in the sensors. So we make quarterly updates at a minimum, to make sure these data stay in sync with the long term archive record.

John Arnold

That's incredible. So you're mentioning all these high-tech aspects of what goes into the satellite. Let's talk a little bit about how the new tools of the Fourth Industrial Age — things like autonomy, artificial intelligence, machine learning — how do things like that figure into a program like Landsat and how could they be used in the future to help improve the processes that your team and other teams are using?

Doug Jaton

That's a great question, and we're pretty excited about this new field of activity. So you mentioned the fourth industrial age — AI/ML. I would add cloud into that — cloud and enabling technology that allows that infrastructure to happen. So in my mind, the role that we have at TSSC is really to support a couple of really significant AI/ML efforts. And we have two roles. One is to enable these capabilities from a data provider perspective. Again, we're sitting on 50 years of Landsat data.

John Arnold

Right.

Doug Jaton

What do we do with it? How do we make it available for these tools to take advantage of it? So that's step number one. And then applying some of the new cloud-based AI/ML tools to understand what's happening.

Some of the new cloud-based AI/ML tools to understand what's happening over that 50 year history, so from a user perspective — so one of the projects, a very successful project, we have at USGS EROS, the TSSC is supporting, is the USGS Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection (LCMAP) project. And that's really headed in the AI/ML direction. By analyzing, we've recently ran that across all of the corners, all over the U.S., to run against the deep Landsat record, to build a land cover and land change product year by year at the pixel level. So we have a database of billions of pixels that we're doing time series analysis on. So and at this point, it's at the U.S. level. Our goal is to take it to the cloud and do it in a global scale.

John Arnold

That's amazing.

Doug Jaton

So, these are the tools that can be supported. But before we can move that data to the cloud, we have to enable and recondition the archive to be cloud friendly and AI/ML friendly, as you mentioned earlier. So one of the things that I'm really proud of, our team's led the charge at EROS to come up with what was known as the Landsat collection 2 release late in 2020. So if you look in the USGS systems, you'll see that EROS reprocessed and staged over 8 million Landsat scenes, a little over 10 petabytes of data, all sitting out in a highly curated Amazon web service object store.

John Arnold

That's awesome.

Doug Jaton

So the Landsat archives are available out on the public cloud for anyone to economically take advantage of and really take advantage of some of these new emerging tools. So it really is at a critical enabling step for global scale time series analysis.

One thing we haven't discussed yet is modeling. So EROS TSSC team supports some really cutting-edge modeling as well. Our staff recently supported some backwards and forwards in-time modeling of 150 years of evapotranspiration. Again, water use of the Delaware River Basin, and Delaware River Basin is an important water source for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and New York. So it gets a lot of attention. So we can use satellite data to see where we've been and where we're going. And now we have modeling tools that best forecast and backcast that information. So all these tools are coming out of the new technology, as you discussed earlier.

I will end this session with a comment that one of our USGS thought leaders brought up said, he mentioned a comment that, "the AI/ML and the cloud — these capabilities really allow us to make better science products faster." And that quote really resonates with me. Because that's what we're seeing. The pace of change and the pace of innovation by having this data in the cloud and taking advantage of these emerging tools really is speeding things up. So I think we're seeing that in all society, but we're seeing it in the remote sensing world as well. And we have KBR experts at the leading edge of that field. We can't be more proud of them.

John Arnold

That's incredible. When you're talking about this, Doug, you're very animated, and I can see that you are really enjoying it. There's a lot of passion there. I'm wondering what's your favorite part of your job? What's the thing that you most enjoy about what you get to do every day?

Doug Jaton

Well, that's a tough question. I like all parts of our job. So, we have a large team here at EROS and we're doing fundamental groundbreaking activities. We are bringing new data to the public. We're bringing new science products to the public and we do it faster than ever. So, it's fun to get new data sources here. It's fun to exploit them and it's fun to make them available to the public in the cloud and other innovative areas. So, that said, ultimately an engineer, I like the satellite side of things. So, me personally.

John Arnold

That's awesome. Well, I appreciate you immensely. I appreciate the work that you and your team are doing to make the world a better place to live. That we're all safe and we know where everything is and I wish you and your team, good luck on the launch coming up on [September] the 27th. Hope everything goes smoothly.

Doug Jaton

Thank John. I'm sure it will. We've had a great team and we're ready for it. So bring on Landsat 9.

John Arnold

Good luck.

WRAP-UP

John Arnold

Well, if you didn't already know, I'm happy to report that Landsat 9 was successfully launched on Monday, September 27th, 2021. So congratulations to Doug and the KBR EROS team and everyone involved at NASA, the United States Geological Survey, and anyone I'm in inadvertently leaving out. According to the Landsat website, the satellite is now power positive and proceeding accordingly through its commissioning phase and the first data from Landsat 9 will be publicly available from the USGS in early 2022.

For more information on Landsat 9, a simple Google search will bring back plenty, including a pretty awesome YouTube video I found called “Nine things about Landsat 9,” which is helpful for the layperson wanting a quick guide on what Landsat is and does. You can also visit landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/data — did you get all that? Or you can go to usgs.gov, search for Landsat 9 in the search tool there, and then explore to your hearts content. There's a lot to see and read about and to learn. The resources available to the public, really are spectacular.

Before I go, I'd like to thank Doug Jaton again for his time expertise and passion for what he and the KBR team are doing at EROS. I'd also like to take a moment to thank John Hult, publication specialist over at EROS, for his help with this episode. John is also the host of an excellent podcast called “Eyes on Earth” that covers topics like remote sensing, earth observation, land change and science. So if you liked this episode, please be sure to check out “Eyes on Earth.”

Finally, if you are interested in learning more about what KBR does in space, in other areas of government services and in sustainable technology, please visit us at kbr.com. And if you like what you're hearing on the podcast, or if you have ideas for future episodes, please reach out to us at, inorbit@kbr.com.

We'll have one more episode of the podcast for you before taking a short break for the holidays, but we'll be back with an all-new season early in 2022. So let us know what you'd like to hear more about.

From the entire In Orbit team, thanks as always for listening and everybody take care.