Landsat 5 images can be ordered and purchased through GINA. This page contains detailed information regarding the Landsat 5 acquisition schedule, ordering procedure, and cost.

Background and Capture Priority

Background information for the Landsat 5 for Alaska project is available in the GINA news release. See the GINA Landsat data page for general information and access to Landsat data from the free GINA archive.

Landsat 5 is being received by NOAA/NESDIS FCDAS at their Gilmore Creek, Fairbanks, Alaska ground station on a "non-interference" basis. Landsat is a lower priority capture than the NESDIS operational supports, such as the Polar Operational Environmental Satellite (POES) and Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) platforms. FCDAS has three primary tracking antennas. However, there are times when all three antennas are busy receiving data from missions of higher priority than Landsat 5.

Planning and Priority Modifications

Reception priorities at FCDAS are fixed by a standard operating procedure defined by the FCDAS mission. GINA and FCDAS staff are working to modify procedures to accommodate emergency response and high-priority science needs.

Requests for high-priority captures are being handled through GINA. A table of high-priority supports has been compiled and communicated to the NOAA schedulers. There is no guarantee that your requested scene will be captured. To add your priority to the user requests list, please email L5data@gina.alaska.edu. Contact Tom Heinrichs with specific questions.

• Map of potential captures over Alaska, Canada, and Russia
• User request flow chart

Ordering Data

Data can be ordered directly from EROS or through GINA. The cost is $625 per scene. GINA has a 20% bulk discount that can be passed onto University users ordering data through GINA.

Users are strongly encouraged to order data using the MRLC parameters. Much of the data available for free or low cost for Alaska was ordered using these parameters. Continuing use of these parameters for landscape-scale studies enables comparisons over time to be done with minimal degradation due to reprocessing and resampling. Please consult the parameters page for further details and contacts. Also, see the MRLC Project website for further information.

Users can order data directly from USGS-EROS using GloVis and EarthExplorer. If you want to browse through all images available for a certain path/row, GloVis works well. If you are seeking a specific path/row or region for a specific date range, EarthExplorer has better querying capabilities. Choose "Landsat 4-5 TM" from the "Data Set Selection" list in EarthExplorer to search for scenes captured this summer in Alaska.

For help, please email L5data@gina.alaska.edu. Contact Tom Heinrichs with specific questions.