Landsat 5 Struggling

After more than two decades of service, Landsat 5 is showing signs of its age. Early Saturday, October 6, 2007, the Landsat 5 Flight Operations Team (FOT) noted that battery #2 was automatically taken off-line the previous evening. All imaging was stopped in order to conserve power. This will have implications for Landsat 7 imagery as well, as the scan line drops are corrected with Landsat 5 data. If this problem is not correct it will not be until 2011, when Landsat 8 is expected to launch, that we will have new Landsat data.