Satellite is built in Valley

Gilbert firm designed and tested Earth-imaging craft

A powerful new satellite designed, built and tested in the Valley promises to help scientists better track the global impact of environmental changes and natural disasters after a planned launch into space early next year.

Landsat8, an Earth-imaging satellite developed in Gilbert by Orbital Sciences Corp., will carry two scientific instruments into low orbit, about 438 miles above the planet's surface.

Built for the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA, the satellite is designed to capture images across multiple spectrums, including infrared, enabling government agencies to monitor shrinking glaciers, crop production and deforestation.

Within a few weeks, crews will begin the meticulous task of loading the 20-foot-tall satellite into a custom-built cargo bay, Orbital Sciences project manager Daren Iverson said.

The satellite will then be shipped by semitruck to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to await a February launch.

Researchers say the satellite represents a big leap in technology that should produce higher-quality, more-accurate data that will help reduce a major scientific hurdle: uncertainty.

"They can see trends of what's happening in other countries and how it could impact the U.S. in the future," Orbital Vice President Mike Miller said.

Once in space, the satellite will beam home vast amounts of data at a rate of three-fourths of a gigabit per second, Iverson said.

"During one of our environmental tests ... we were constantly having to go buy additional portable hard drives to pull the data off," Iverson said.

Orbital Sciences was required to build the satellite to last at least five years in space, but the company has a goal of 10 years and says the device could last longer.

Two previous Landsat satellites are still in orbit and partially operational, Orbital Sciences officials said. When the newest "bird" arrives in space, Landsat5 will be decommissioned and brought back to Earth, they said.

The first Landsat satellite was launched 40 years ago, and a series of follow-up missions has produced the longest continuous record of the Earth's surface from space, according to an Orbital Sciences media release.

That consistency puts the program in a unique position to track land changes from 1972 to the present.

For example, Landsat images gathered by NASA show the gradual shrinking of Bear Glacier in Alaska over two decades. Other images capture the rich biodiversity of ocean lagoons and coral reefs and can track the invasion of non-native species.

The U.S. Forest Service uses the satellite data after a wildfire to assess damage, estimate air quality and monitor burned areas for regrowth.

For the U.S. Geological Survey, the satellite could bring an enhanced ability to track the global spread of farmland, which presents challenges related to greenhouse-gas emissions and water consumption, geographer Prasad Thenkabail said.

About 12 percent of the planet's land is used for agriculture, a figure that has spiked from just 2 percent in the 19th century, he said.

That trend has clear environmental consequences, as farming accounts for about 90 percent of all human water use and about 60 percent of emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas, Thenkabail said.

Using images from the Landsat missions, the Geological Survey can also see what types of crops are being grown, the volume of water consumed and whether the farms are irrigated or rain-fed, he said.

Satellite images also help researchers determine worldwide crop-production levels for the Foreign Agriculture Service, which plays a role in commodity pricing, Moran said.

Landsat images and data have been helpful to some private-sector companies, Orbital officials said.

American Forest Management, a real-estate brokerage and consulting firm on the East Coast, uses the data to estimate the concentration of needles on pine trees and determine the healthiness of millions of acres of timberland.

Orbital Sciences, based in Dulles, Va., employs 42 percent of its workforce in the Valley. The company has about 1,350 employees in Chandler and about 300 in Gilbert.

The company's 135,000-square-foot Gilbert facility is equipped to handle the simultaneous production of six satellites the size of Landsat or as many as 28 smaller satellites, Iverson said.