At the 2025 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting (AGU25), scientists and researchers from around the world met to discuss the present and future of remote sensing. The conference is the largest annual gathering of Earth and space scientists, and was held December 15-19 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Thousands of scientists, educators, and policymakers gathered at the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center under the theme “Where Science Connects Us.”
NASA Landsat 8/9 Program Scientist Nima Pahlevan contributed to a session titled “Public Data, National Priorities: Unlocking Value with Landsat,” which focused on how Landsat’s free and open data can power innovation across private and public sectors. The session highlighted Landsat’s role in energy development, artificial intelligence, national security, and other key national needs. The panelists highlighted Landsat’s role as a foundational dataset, emphasizing the importance of its long historical record and reliable data for both scientific and operational applications. They noted specific applications of Landsat data, including wildfire preparedness, forest management, urban heat island analysis, and near real-time change detection, which contribute to the large economic value of the Landsat data record.
“Landsat is our historical record of the Earth’s surface,” said David Roy, lead member of the 2026-2030 Landsat Science Team.
Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS)—one of NASA’s most downloaded datase …