Satellites

Satellites

Of or relating to any man-made object launched to orbit Earth or another celestial body.

Contributors in Satellites

Satellites

An Earth satellite orbit in which the satellite remains in a fixed position over a geographic location on the Earth. This requires that the orbital plane be in the same plane as the equator, and that ...

Space oblique mercator (SOM)

Aerospace; Satellites

A variation on the basic Mercator map projection based on the dynamics of satellite motion. The movements of the Landsat platform, sensors, and the Earth, expressed as functions of time, are used to ...

Planetary albedo

Aerospace; Satellites

A unitless measure of the ratio of outgoing to incoming solar radiation created by converting a radiometrically calibrated image observed from orbit to the apparent reflectance of the planet being ...

Sun-synchronous

Aerospace; Satellites

An Earth satellite orbit in which the orbital plane remains at a fixed angle with respect to the Sun, precessing through 360° during the period of a year. Landsat satellites are in near-polar orbit ...

Parallax

Aerospace; Satellites

The apparent change in the position of one object, or point, with respect to another, when viewed from different angles.

Nominal scan centre

Aerospace; Satellites

The centre of the cluster of scene centres of scenes imaged over the same area but at different times. Useful as an indexing tool in view of the fact that slight changes in the Landsat orbit, in ...

NIST traceability

Aerospace; Satellites

The attempt to trace radiometric units and calibrations back to a common radiance source at the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in order to compare measurements ...