European Space Agency (ESA) Landsat MSS/TM/ETM+ Archive Bulk-Processing: processor improvements and data quality

The Landsat program is a joint United States Geological Survey (USGS) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) enterprise for Earth Observation (EO), that represents the world’s longest running system of satellites for moderate-resolution optical remote sensing. The European Space Agency (ESA) has acquired Landsat data over Europe through the ESA ground stations over the last 40 years, in co-operation with USGS and NASA. A new ESA Landsat Multi-Spectral Scanner (MSS), Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) processor has been developed. This enhanced processor aligns the historical Landsat products to the highest quality standards that can be achieved with the current knowledge of the instruments. The updated processor is mainly based on the USGS algorithm; however the ESA processor has some different features that are detailed in this paper. Using this upgraded processor, ESA is currently performing for the first time a bulk-processing of its entire Landsat series MSS/TM/ETM+ historical archive to make all products available to users. Current achievements include the processing and online distribution of approximately 290 000 new Landsat 5 TM high-quality products acquired at the Kiruna ground station between 1983 and 2011. The Landsat 5 TM bulk-processed products are made available for direct download after registration at: https://earth.esa.int/web/guest/pi-community/apply for-data/fast-registration. The remainder of the ESA’s Landsat data, dating back more than 40 years, will gradually become available for all users during the course of 2014. The ESA Landsat processor algorithm enhancement, together with the results of the ESA archive bulk-processing, and an overview on the data quality on a subset of the Landsat 5 TM data are herein presented.