The U.S., One Strip at a Time

The NASA and USGS-run Landsat 8 satellite has been in orbit for a year, and the science team has been compiling this image of the U.S. to test its data. The satellite can cover 115-mile wide strips at a time, and it takes 223 passes over 16 days to image the entire country (it took a few times to get cloudless days). Landsat 8 is the most recent iteration of the Landsat family, at least one of which has been in continual service since 1972.