The United States Geological Survey (USGS) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) -run Landsat 8 Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) imagery satellite’s primary job is to take pictures of the Earth. But occasionally, like teenagers with new camera phones, Landsat 8 feels compelled to take pictures of other satellites. Really—you can see the evidence here in this Yahoo! Post . In this case, Landsat 8 took pictures of Landsat 5 below it. Why is Landsat 5 lower than Landsat 8?
Landsat 5 is no longer operational, so NASA decided to move it to a decaying orbit in which the satellite will eventually burn up in Earth’s atmosphere—20 years from now. So in the meantime, it’s picture-taking time. Landsat 8 is still operational. It also has several different “color bands” for its optical camera sensor. So there are several images of Landsat 5 on Yahoo!’s page, but they look different because each image used a different band.
For more information about color bands, you can always go to my LEO lessons for imagery, starting with Lesson 15, here.
The Mad Spaceball 