NASA awards EarthDaily US$3m task order to test constellation data against Landsat

EarthDaily announced on 26 October 2026 that NASA has awarded it a US$3 million task order to supply EarthDaily Constellation data and technical support. NASA and the US Geological Survey (USGS) will use it to assess how commercial capabilities could be built into federal land imaging programmes such as Landsat, under the joint Sustainable Land Imaging commercial transition initiative.

The agencies will evaluate the data against Landsat requirements, including calibration, stability, radiometric and geometric performance, and harmonisability. Tests will run alongside Landsat and other reference missions, and through the USGS analysis-ready data and NASA's harmonised Landsat-Sentinel-2 pipelines, to see whether Landsat-grade surface reflectance and surface temperature are achievable. Work will also cover AI-ready products and uncertainty characterisation.

Eight of the constellation's 10 satellites are in orbit. They offer 22 spectral bands, with native resolution of 5 m in visible and near-infrared, 95 m in shortwave infrared and 120 m in thermal.

Why it matters: The results could set the requirements commercial data must meet to be harmonised with the Landsat archive, shaping how future hybrid public-commercial land monitoring is built. Landsat-compatible commercial data with more frequent revisits would be useful for users worldwide.