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Landsat and : The Forgotten Legacy

Paul D. Lowman, Jr.

Abstract 8 and MA-~),the pilots (W.M. Schirra and L.G. Cooper) This paper demonstrates that Landsat was fundamentally a carried out hand-held 70-mm terrain photography for geo- result of the . The U.S. 's logic purposes (O'Keefe et al., 1963), suggested by P.M. Meri- EROS proposal of 1966, which eventually led to Landsat, was field on the basis of his analyses of sounding stimulated largely by the demonstrated utility of 1100 orbital photography (Merifield and Rammelkamp, 1964). With a long photographs from the Gemini missions, Gemini being solely (22-orbit) mission, Cooper had the to obtain 29 preparation for Apollo. In addition, -oriented remote 70-mm color photographs, chiefly of southern . These sensing research sponsored by NASA in the mid-1960s, pri- photographs, backed by Cooper's seemingly incredible visual marily support for Apollo lunar missions, included studies of observations, were one of the main scientific results of Pro- Earth resource applications as well. Finally, the extensive se- ject Mercury (Lowman, 1965). They were displayed at a 1964 ries of airborne studies carried out by the UNESCO remote sensing conference in Toulouse, triggering NASA Manned Center was Apollo-derived in that -wide interest, and termed by the late W.A. Fischer the primary mission of MSG was to accomplish a lunar land- "the high point of the meeting." The Mercury program ing. It is concluded that, had it not been for the Apollo Pro- ended with the MA-9 mission in 1963, but the Mercury pho- gram, Landsat or its equivalent would have been delayed by tographs led directly to the SO05 Synoptic Terrain Photogra- 10 years or more. phy Experiment (Lowman, 1969), carried on the two-man As it recedes into history, the Apollo Program is increas- Gemini flights beginning in 1965. ingly regarded as a heroic effort, but one that did little more It is at this point that the link between Apollo and Land- than put flags and footprints on the . There is virtually sat emerges clearly. The Gemini Program, started after Presi- no realization that one of Apollo's most fundamental results, dent Kennedy's 1961 proposal for a lunar landing, was an too important to be trivialized as "spinoff," was the Landsat intensive effort to develop the technology and operational Program. Two recent reviews of Landsat's history (Lauer et techniques for lunar missions. Despite its separate designa- al., 1997; Mack and Williamson, 1998) make little or no tion, and the supeficial resemblance of the Gemini space- mention of Apollo, although Mack's (1990) earlier treatment craft to the Mercury capsules, Gemini was an integral part of briefly summarized the impact of Gemini photography. These Apollo. It produced a broad technological infrastructure and and similar publications, such as Vincent's (1997) authorita- extensive experience in orbital rendezvous and extravehicu- tive remote sensing text, give a misleading impression of lar activity. However, the Gemini also carried out how Landsat actually arose. a wide range of scientific experiments, one of them synoptic The purpose of this note is to set the record straight for terrain photography. On the first long (4-day) mission, J.A. the remote sensing community, for more reasons than simple McDivitt and the late E.H. White took, among others, a series historical accuracy. The Apollo Program was in its day widely of 39 overlapping near-vertical color pictures from Baja Cali- criticized by scientists, including several Nobel laureates, on fornia to central (Lowman et al., 1966). All ten Gemini the grounds that unmanned spacecraft would be just as effec- missions, except the aborted GT-8,produced photographs tive and far less expensive. Future space efforts may be useful for , , or , eventually handicapped by this still-widespread view, typified by the totaling about 1100 (Lowman, 1969a; Lowman, 1980). Many recent statement of French space minister Claude Allegre, are unsurpassed to this day (Figure I),possibly because the criticizing the International , that he was una- Earth's atmosphere in areas such as Brazil is not as clear as ware of any important scientific discovery made by an astro- it was before deforestation began. naut (Space News, 22-28 June 1998). Published wideIy, in magazines such as the National Ge- The case for Apollo as a key element in Landsat begins ographic (Lowman, 1966) and Life, the Gemini color photo- with the statement by the late W. T. Pecora (1969), that graphs generated international interest in the potential appli- Landsat's precursor concept, the Earth Resources Observation cations of orbital imagery of the Earth's surface (Lillesand (EROS) program of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and Kiefer, 1994), as distinguished fiom satellite meteorol- was "conceived in 1966 largely as a direct result of the dem- ogy, where the value of orbital sensors had already been onstrated utility of Mercury and Gemini orbital photography demonstrated. It should be emphasized here that, until the to Earth resource studies." A contemporary review of satel- mid-1960s, there was virtually no appreciation of the scien- lite imagery in this journal (Merifield et al., 1969) devoted its tific and environmental applications of orbital terrain imagery. first six pages to the "superb" Gemini and Apollo 70-mm For example, "Long Range Thinking in Space Sciences," an photographs. A similar paper, by a U~GSgeologist (Fary, internal NASA document published in October 1960, al- 1967) argued for EROS, illustrating its value with several though outlining investigations of the Earth's atmosphere, ''magnificent" Gemini photographs. However, the link be- magnetic fields, and distribution, said nothing about tween EROS and Apollo is a complex one, needing further discussion. The American manned space program began with Pro- Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing, ject Mercury in 1958. On the last two Mercury missions (MA- Vol. 65, No. 10, October 1999, pp. 1143-1147. 0099-1112/99/6510-1143$3.00/0 Goddard Space Flight Center (Code 921), Greenbelt, MD 8 1999 American Society for Photogrammetry 20771 ([email protected]..gov). and Remote Sensing

PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING 81 REMOTE SENSING October 1999 1143 man, 1996). Starting in 1963, a wide range of remote sensing studies was carried out with the support of NASA Headquar- ters under the leadership of P.C. Badgley (Lowman, 1980; Mack, 1990). Badgley coordinated remote sensing efforts for Apollo missions then being planned (Friedrnan et al., 1964), in particular, Earth-orbital Apollo Extension System (AES, later Apollo Applications Program) missions that, in effect, were eventually flown as . (He also encouraged the USGS EROS proposal.) The Earth-orbital and aircraft missions were viewed as precursors to later lunar missions (Figure 3), the terrestrial test sites being chosen for their similarity to lu- nar terrains as well as for purely terrestrial applications. The remote sensing programs developed by Badgley and his col- laborators were thus an integral part of Apollo. A similar Apollo parentage can be shown for the Earth- oriented remote sensing programs of the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) (now the Lyndon B, ), starting in the early 1960s. MSC was, of course, the lead center for the Apollo lunar landing program (as well as the Gemini missions), but it also carried out a broad program of remote sensing research using a fleet of aircraft with a va- riety of sensors. MSC was responsible for Skylab with its complement of remote sensing instruments, the eventual re- alization of AES as mentioned above. The point is that the Manned Spacecraft Center was built solely as the result of Figure 1. photograph S-66-63082 (original in the decision to go to the Moon; without Apollo, there would color); view to east over the Zagros Mountains (left), have been no MSC. Strait of Hormuz, and Makran Range. Persian Gulf at It should be added that the MSC contribution to ERTS lower right. From Lowman and Tiedemann (1971). continued after the period with which this paper is primarily concerned (Amsbury, 1989; Kaltenbach, 1969a; Kalatenbach, 1969b). The unmanned mission carried a fixed 70- mm camera that produced excellent pairs in color the study of the planet's surface from orbit. The Mercury over the southwest U.S. and . The crew car- photographs began to remedy such omissions, but it was the ried out an extensive terrain photography Program with a va- sudden flood of high-resolution color photographs from Gem- riety of films and filters, returning about 200 photos useful ini that gave orbital remote sensing a jump start, so to speak, for geology. What has been called the ''most important ter- In particular, they stimulated the EROS proposal. rain photography" (Colwell, 1997) was the SO65 experiment Electronic imaging from space had been carried out on in 1969. Using a set of four coaxially mounted since 1960 by various meteorological beginning 70-mm cameras, astronauts McDivitt, Schweikart, and Scott with the Tires series. In 1966 RCA, who had supplied the Ti- SUCC~SS~~~~Ycarried Out a returned-film simulation for ERTS ros television cameras, approached the terrain photography (Lowman, 196913)-In addition to producing many geologi- experimenters at Goddard Space Flight Center with the pro- cally useful pictures, the So65 experiment provided a proof- posal to use the Return Beam Vidicon (RFJV) camera on a sat- of-conce~tfor ERTS. In summary, the Apollo Program not ellite to produce high resolution imagery for geological and only provided the initial stimulus for ERTS, through EROS, related purposes. Preoccupied with the hundreds of color but continued to produce valuable experience in orbital re- photographs from the Gemini missions (Lowman adTiede- mote sensing up to and beyond the first E~~s/Landsatlaunch mann, 1971), the GSFC group referred the RCA representatives in l972. to W.A. Fischer. Already a world leader in aerial photogra- An obvious question arises at this point. Given the rapid phy and "remote sensing" (then a new term), Fischer real- progress in remote sensing during the mid-1960s, would not ized the value of an electronic Earth resources satellite. He Landsat or its equivalent have been developed anyway, and W.T. Pecora, with the cooperation of the Office of Naval sooner or later? Research and the Department of , in the following The writer's answer is: Yes, but very much "later," not months produced the EROS proposal, originally based on the "sooner." As pointed out previously, from 1963 on NASA RBV. However, the Gemini photographs (Figure 2) were used was planning orbital remote sensing programs for later repeatedly by the USGS and NASA to justify what eventually Apollo missions, and for eventual space stations. Some of became the Earth Resources Technology Satellite, later Land- these were carried out succesfully on Skylab, as the Earth ~ sat. The original ERoS Interior Department press release (21 Resources Experiments Package (EREP). However, the Apollo September 1966) included three Gemini 70-mm photographs, Program was stopped in 1975; the successor to Skylab was and subsequent displays such as Figure 2 featured many consigned to the Smithsonian Museum; and the International more. Congressional testimony by NASA, the Interior Depart- Space Station will not be operational until the next century, ment, and other officials similarly included Gemini pictures. almost 20 years after initially proposed by President Reagan. The generous acknowledgment cited above by W.T. Pecora is The sudden emergence of the small electronic Earth re- thus documented by the Geological Survey's own publications. sources satellite concept clearly short-circuited a long and The Apollo-Landsat connection would be demonstrable uncertain development sequence, just as Fred Singer's even without the Gemini photography. Although focussed MOUSE (Minimum Orbital Unmanned Satellite of Earth) by- primarily on a lunar landing, the Apollo Program included a passed the large space station concepts of the early 1950s substantial effort in Earth resource remote sensing, an aspect (Newell, 1980). However, it took a "long fight," in Mack's of Apollo often neglected in the technical literature (Low- (1990) term, for Landsat to become an approved program.

1144 October 1999 PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING 81 REMOTE SENSING I

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Fig\ 2. Display prepared by A. Csonl .. J.S. Geological Survey, 1967; figures and text supplied by P.D. Lowman. (Note: City of Kerman is in -Iran, not "West Pakistan.")

There was intense opposition to it from all sides, starting 1997). Without Landsat, it is likely that we would be waiting with objections of the Budget Bureau to any new NASA pro- for such declassification, or for a civilian ","well grams. It was argued, for example, that high-altitude aircraft into the next century. could do the job as well as a satellite for much less money. Goward (1989) has described Landsat as "one of the Political objections were raised as to the legality of photo- greatest scientific achievments of the latter twentieth century graphing foreign countries from space without their pennis- - a continuous, consistent, quality record of the continental sion. Even after the first Landsat launch, the phrase "solution surfaces of the Earth, dating from 1972." It seems clear that in search of a problem" was occasionally heard. All these this achievment would have been delayed at least 10 years obstacles arose in spite of the spectacular success of the had it not been for the Apollo Program. Given the rate of en- Gemini and Apollo Earth-orbital photography. Without these vironmental destruction, such a delay might have had disas- photographs, proponents of Earth resource satellites would trous consequences. have had to rely chiefly on air photos, spectral reflectance As and when launched in 1972, Landsat was a major curves, and persuasion. part of the Apollo legacy, a tribute to the skill and dedica- Another question should be answered briefly: Even with- tion of the astronauts, and a striking example of the seren- out Apollo, would not imagery from military reconnaissance dipity of . satellites have been put to civilian uses? The best answer to this is simply the fact that, even after some 20 years of suc- Acknowledgments cessful orbital sensing by Landsat, SPOT, ERS-1, and other satel- The basic purpose of this paper is to document the contribu- lites, it was not until 1995 that photographs from the CORONA tions of the people of the Apollo Program, and to that extent program, which began in 1960, were declassified (McDonald, the reference list is a blanket acknowledgment. However, in

PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING October 1999 1145 POSSIBLE MANNED SCIENTIFIC MISSIONS

SCIENTIFIC MISSIONS 1970-74 1975-79 1980-84 11985-

EARTH ORBITAL 1. EARLY MANNED ORB ITAL RESEARCH FLIGHTS 2. SMALL MANNED ORBITING RESEARCH LABORATORY 3. MEDIUM SIZED MANNED ORB lTlNG LABORATORY 4. LARCEOBSERVATORYAND RESEARCH LABORATORY LUNAR 1. INITIAL SURVEY AND LANDING 2. EXPLORATION Af3 SURF TRAVEI ACS ORM FISH

3. EXTENDED EXPLORATION LtSA OR APPLICATIONS, AND OPNS. SIMILAR DIRECI- SUPPLY- SYSltN PLANETARY I i 1. INITIAL SURVEY FLY LANDlR ' AND LANDING

Figure 3. Proposed sequence of Earth orbital, lunar, and planetary missions (from Badgley (1964)).

preparing this paper, I have benefited from reviews, corre- Lowman, P.D., Jr., 1965. Space photography - A review, Photo- spondence, or discussions with Dave Amsbury, Don Beattie, grammetric Engineering, 31(1):76-86. the late Herb Blodget, Bob Colwell, Pat Dickerson, John Kal- -, 1966. The earth from orbit, National Geographic, 130(5):644- tenbach, Bill Muehlberger, Vince Salomonson, Herb Tiede- 671. mann, and Lou Walter. , 1969a. Geologic orbital photography: Experience from the Gemini Program, Photogrammetria, 24:77-106. , 1969b. Apollo 9 Multispectml Photography: Geologic Analy- sis, X-644-69-423, Goddard Space Flight Center, 53 p. , 1980. The evolution of geological space photography, Remote Amsbury, D.L., 1989. manned observations of Earth Sensing in Geology (B.S. Siegal and A.R. Gillespie, editors), John before the , Geocarto International, 1:7-14. Wiley, New York, pp. 91-115. Badgley, P.C., 1964. The application of remote sensors in planetary , 1996. T plus twenty-five years: A defense of the Apollo Pro- exploration, presented at the Third Annual Remote Sensing Con- gram, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 49:71-79. ference, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Lowman, P.D., Jr., J.A. McDivitt, and E.H. White, 11, 1966. Terrain Colwell, R.N., 1997. History and place of photographic interpreta- Photography on the Gemini N Mission: Prelimina~Report, tion, Manual of Photogmphic Interpretation, Second Edition NASA TN D-3982,15 p. (W.R. Philipson, editor), American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, pp. 3-47. Lowman, P.D., Jr., and H.A. Tiedemann, 1971. Terrain Photography from Gemini Spacecraft: Final Geologic Report, Goddard Space Fary, R.W., 1967. Explorers from space, Journal of Geological Educa- Flight Center, X-644-71-15, 75 p. tion, 15:99-104. Lillesand, T.M., and R.W. Kiefer, 1994. Remote Sensing and Image Friedman, J.D., R.J.P. Lyon, D.A. Beattie, and J. Downey, 1964. Lunar Interpretation, Third Edition, John Wiley, New York, 750 p. ground data required for interpretation of AES orbital experi- Mack, P.E., 1990. Viewing the Earth: The Social Construction of the ments, Advances in the Astronautical Sciences, 20:381-392. Landsat Satellite System, MIT Press, Cambridge, 270 p. Goward, S.N., 1989. Landsat 1989; Remote sensing at the crossroads, Mack, P.E., and R.A. Williamson, 1998. Observing the Earth from Remote Sensing of Environment, 28:3-4. space, Exploring the Unknown, Vol. 3 3.M. Logsdon, editor), SP- Kaltenbach, J.L., 1969a. Science Screening Report of the Apollo 7 4407, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Washing- Mission 70mm Photogmphy and NASA Earth Resources Aircraff ton, D.C., pp. 155-177. Mission 981 Photography, NASA Tech. Memo X-58029. McDonald, R.A., 1997. CORONA: Success for space reconnaissance, , 1969b. Science Report on the 70mm Photography of the a look into the Cold War, and a revolution for intelligence, Pho- Apollo 6 Mission, NASA Tech. Note S-217. togrammetric Engineering S. Remote Sensing, 63:689-720. Lauer, D.T., S.A. Morain, and V.V. Salomonson, 1997. The Landsat Merifield, P.M., and J. Rarnmelkamp, 1964. Photo Interpretation of Program: Its origins, evolution, and impacts, Photogrammetric White Sands Rocket Photography, Report No. 2, Contract NAS5- Engineering 6. Remote Sensing, 63(7):831-838. 3390, Lockheed California Company, 76 p.

1148 October 1999 PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING Merifield, P.M., J. Cronin, L.L. Foshee, S.J. Gawarecki, J.T. Neal, R.E. Flight, Special Report 45, National Aeronautics and Space Ad- Stevenson, R.O. Stone, and R.S. Williams, Jr., 1969. Satellite im- minstration, Washington, D.C., 445 p. agery of the Earth, Photogrammetric Engineering, 653654468. Pecora, W.T., 1969. Earth resource observations from an orbiting Newell, H.E., 1980. Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space spacecraft, Manned Laboratories in Space (S.F. Singer, editor), Science, Special Publication 4211, National Aeronautics and Springer-Verlag, New York, pp. 75-87. Space Adminstration, 497 p. Vincent, R.K., 1997. Geological and Environmental Remote Sensing, O'Keefe, J.A., L. Dunkelman, S.D. Soules, W.F. Huch, and P.D.Low- Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 366 p. man, Jr., 1963. Observations of space phenomena, Mercury Pro- (Received 12 August 1998; accepted 10 September 1998;revised 03 ject Summary, Including Results of the Fourth Manned Orbital November 1998)

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