673 scenes comprise this collection of Landsat 3 Return Beam Vidicon (RBV) products. The European Space Agency (ESA) acquired the data via its Fucino ground station, created by digitizing original 70mm film rolls. The dataset was last updated in August 2018.
Use Cases
- Analyze historical land cover using the panchromatic spectral band (0.505–0.750 µm) for Landsat 3 scenes.
- Compare spatial resolution and swath width between the 40-meter RBV data from Landsat 3 and the 80-meter data from Landsats 1-2.
- Study changes within the Fucino ground station's visibility mask over the 1972-1983 operational period of the RBV instrument.
- Perform stereo or mosaic analysis using the two side-by-side camera swaths, each covering approximately 90 km.
Strengths
- Contains 673 digitized satellite scenes.
- Offers 40-meter spatial resolution for Landsat 3 data, improved from the 80-meter resolution on earlier missions.
- Covers a broad spectral range from green to near-infrared (0.505–0.750 µm) for Landsat 3.
Limitations
- Limited to 673 scenes, which is a small sample relative to full mission archives.
- Data is derived from digitized film, which may introduce artifacts or quality loss compared to original digital sensors.
- Temporally stale, with no updates since 2018 and imagery from 1972-1983.
Provenance
- Source
- European Space Agency (ESA), acquired via the Fucino ground station.
- Collection Method
- Digitalization of original 70mm black and white film rolls from the Landsat RBV instrument.
- Time Range
- 1972 to 1983 (Landsat 1-3 operational period for RBV).
- Freshness
- Last updated in 2018; historical data from 1972-1983.
- Geography
- Areas within the visibility mask of the ESA Fucino ground station.