European Space agency (ESA) Landsat MSS/TM/ETM+/OLI archive: 42 years of our history

Whilst recent years have witnessed the development and exploitation of operational Earth Observation (EO) satellite constellation data, the valorisation of historical archives has been a challenge. The ESA Multi Spectral Scanner (MSS) products cover Greenland, Iceland, Continental Europe and North Africa representing an archive of over 600,000 Level 1 (L1) scenes that join the 1 million ESA Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) products already available. This paper presents the L1 MSS product functionality, and how the dataset will be fit for multi temporal purposes. For example, a quality assurance traceability concept is implemented through an innovative pixel based Quality Assurance Band (BQA) that includes land, cloud and anomaly flagging. Land cover application areas are showcased, including vegetation monitoring and snow cover monitoring on glaciers.