OLI-2 Ships From Ball Aerospace

The Landsat 9 instrument that will help scientists detect deforestation, monitor crops and track potentially toxic algal blooms, among many other uses, is now built, tested, and in place to be assembled onto the spacecraft. The Operational Land Imager 2, or OLI-2, will detect visible and infrared light from Earth's surface, providing data on our changing planet. OLI-2 was built and tested at Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado. On Sept. 18, 2019, it was trucked from Boulder to the Northrop Grumman facility in Gilbert, Arizona, arriving the next day. Engineers at Northrop Grumman assemble and test the complete Landsat 9 spacecraft with OLI-2 and another instrument, the Thermal Infrared Sensor 2, or TIRS-2, which was built at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Landsat, a partnership between NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey, is a series of satellites that began with Landsat 1 in 1972. Music: Bit Streaming, composed by David Edwards [ASCAP], published by Soundcast Music [SESAC] Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Matthew Radcliff