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

EarthDaily announced on 26 October 2026 that NASA has awarded it a $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 imagery could be folded into federal land imaging programmes, under the joint Sustainable Land Imaging commercial transition initiative.

The agencies will test the data against Landsat requirements, covering calibration, stability, radiometric and geometric performance, and harmonisation. Tests will be run through the USGS analysis-ready data pipeline and NASA's combined Landsat and Sentinel-2 processing, and will examine whether Landsat-grade surface reflectance and surface temperature can be produced. AI-ready products are also in scope.

Eight of the constellation's ten satellites are in orbit. Their 22 spectral bands have native resolution of 5 m in visible and near-infrared, 95 m in short-wave infrared and 120 m in thermal infrared. Success could lead to hybrid government-commercial mission architectures.

Why it matters: The results will help define the standards commercial imagery must meet to extend the Landsat record, which many African land, agriculture and environmental monitoring programmes rely on. Landsat-compatible daily data could improve change detection where cloud and revisit gaps limit use.