Today we’re releasing the first edition of Landsat-live, a map that is constantly refreshed with the latest satellite imagery from NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite. Landsat 8 data is now publicly available on Amazon S3 via the new Landsat on AWS Public Data Set, making our live pipeline possible. We’re ingesting the data directly from Amazon S3, which is how we’re able to go from satellite to Mapbox map faster than ever. With every pixel captured within the past 32 days, Landsat-live features the freshest imagery possible around the entire planet.
Landsat live: a live updating imagery pipeline of the world at 30 meter resolution. Click the magnifying glass to search and jump to a new location. The map is continuing to fill in live. Areas that were fully clouded on recent satellite passes don’t have data – check in again soon.
With a 30 meter resolution, a 16 day revisit rate, and 10 multispectral bands, this imagery can be used to check the health of agricultural fields, the latest update on a natural disaster, or the progression of deforestation. Interact with the map above to see the freshest imagery anywhere in the world. Be sure to check back often and observe the constantly changing nature of our planet as same day imagery hits this constantly updating map. Scroll down the page to see some of our favorite stills of the earth from Landsat’s latest collection.
A huge thanks to our friends at AWS for hosting this imagery in their cloud infrastructure and to Frank Warmerdam at Planet Labs for contributing open source software to transfer the data to S3.
The city of Antalya, Turkey is bordered to the north by the Taurus Mountains and to the south by the Mediterranean Sea. Antalya is reaching the end of its cooler season. As the hot, dry season sets in, vegetation change will be able to be seen from this view. Captured March 16, 2015.
Brukkaros Mountain is an ancient volcano in southern Namibia. Brukkaros reaches up 650 meters tall, surrounded by very flat landscape. To the far west, where the landscape changes again, old river beds that have become dry canyons can be seen. Captured March 8, 2015.
The town of Denison in western Iowa is still in the midst of winter weather this week. A dusting of snow can be seen across the agricultural fields that will be green and vibrant with crops come summertime. Captured March 14, 2015.
Marrakech, Morocco sits close to the equator and sees warm temperatures the year round. Palm trees and olive orchards make up a large amount of the vegetation around this city, which will change subtly as they bloom throughout the year. Captured March 9, 2015.
The east side of Lake Michigan shows signs of a long, cold winter with massive ice sheets having frozen nearly halfway across the width of the lake. Snow can be seen covering the rural eastern side of Lake Michigan. Chicago, to the west, is a more subtle grey due to the footprints of buildings and plowed streets. Captured March 11, 2015
The extremely fertile Nile River Delta in northern Egypt is a rare green gem surrounded by desert landscape. Come autumn time, blooming lotus flowers will add a slight but discernible shade of red to the thick vegetation. Captured March 18, 2015.
The Himalaya Mountains in their natural snowy state will change slightly throughout the year. The topmost parts of the mountains will remain covered with ice and snow, but the snow line where bare rock and arctic vegetation start to creep in will rise and fall with the seasons. Captured March 4, 2015.
The Central Valley in California is an active, year-round food production epicenter. While green fields can be seen down in the valley throughout the year, it is the hills that border the valley on both the east and west sides that will turn brown as the summer season approaches. Captured March 7, 2015.
We’re just getting started. If you would like to use this imagery via your Mapbox account, send us an e-mail at satellite@mapbox.com to get an early preview.