NASA and USGS will compare EarthDaily Constellation data with Landsat observations and evaluate its potential to support AI-ready products and future hybrid government-commercial mission architectures
MAPLE GROVE, Minn., Oct. 26, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- EarthDaily today announced that it has been awarded a $3 million task order by NASA to provide EarthDaily Constellation data and technical support for NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to evaluate new approaches for incorporating commercial capabilities into federal land imaging programs.
The task order supports the Sustainable Land Imaging (SLI) commercial transition initiative, a joint NASA-USGS effort examining how commercial Earth observation data can complement government systems while meeting the scientific quality and continuity needs of the Landsat record.
Under the contract, NASA and USGS will evaluate EarthDaily Constellation data against Landsat standards and requirements, including data quality, calibration, stability, radiometric and geometric performance, harmonizability, and fitness for purpose. The work will also examine how commercial observations can support the development of AI-ready Earth observation products designed for modern data processing and machine-learning workflows.
"Landsat has created an extraordinary scientific record of how our planet is changing, built on decades of consistent and trusted measurement," said Don Osborne, Chief Executive Officer of EarthDaily. "EarthDaily was built around the same fundamental idea: to understand change, you first need measurements you can trust and compare over time. As Earth observation increasingly becomes an input to AI, that consistency becomes even more important. This work gives us the opportunity to collaborate with NASA and USGS to demonstrate how science-grade, AI-ready commercial observations can complement the Landsat record and help extend trusted measurement into the future."
The EarthDaily Constellation was designed specifically to measure change consistently over time. Eight of its 10 satellites are now in orbit, and cover 100% of Earth's landmass every two days. At full operations the constellation will image about 92% of Earth's landmass every day, excluding Antarctica. A sun-synchronous orbit supports consistent morning acquisitions, with equatorial crossing times of around 10:30 a.m. local time, while a 240 km swath enables systematic coverage across large areas. Its coordinated imaging systems collect data across 22 spectral bands spanning visible, near-infrared, short-wave infrared, and thermal wavelengths, using sensor technologies suited to each part of the spectrum. Native spatial resolution is 5 m in the visible and near-infrared, 95 m in the short-wave infrared and 120 m in the thermal infrared, with no sharpening applied to create apparent detail. Dedicated water-vapor and cirrus bands support atmospheric correction and cloud identification. Together, these design choices produce science-grade, analysis-ready observations that can be compared directly from one collection to the next.
The evaluation will assess how these capabilities could complement Landsat by adding more frequent observations, helping users who need consistent measurements of change between acquisitions.
That measurement foundation is also essential for AI applications. The work aligns with NASA's broader efforts to expand the use of super intelligence in scientific research and the analysis of complex datasets. EarthDaily's consistently calibrated, standardized observations give models a stable basis for detecting meaningful change. That includes Earth observation foundation models trained on decades of Landsat imagery, as well as reanalysis and forecasting applications. Observations that can be harmonized with the Landsat archive could extend those records forward with more frequent measurements. EarthDaily will work with NASA and USGS on experiments involving data evaluation, workflow demonstration, product evaluation and validation, standardized data structures, and uncertainty characterization. The work will also test EarthDaily data alongside Landsat and other reference missions and within USGS Analysis Ready Data and NASA Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 processing workflows.
The evaluation will examine whether EarthDaily data can support Landsat-grade surface reflectance and surface temperature. It will also assess compatibility with long-term land imaging records and the potential for commercial observations to increase revisit frequency and improve spatial resolution when combined with government Earth observation systems.
Throughout the evaluation, EarthDaily scientists and technical teams will work with NASA and USGS scientific and program leads through regular technical exchanges on data quality, cross-calibration, algorithms, product specifications, processing workflows and data integration. Findings will be reviewed jointly as the work progresses and used to refine products and documentation. The work will help identify and refine the requirements commercial capabilities and derived data products would need to meet for harmonization with the Landsat archive.
Demonstrating that EarthDaily data meet Landsat-aligned performance thresholds and provide sufficient value, is a first toward hybrid mission architectures that combine government and commercial assets.
EarthDaily is committed to working with NASA and USGS on approaches that preserve what has made Landsat invaluable: a continuous, more than 50-year record that is freely and openly available to users worldwide.
About EarthDaily
EarthDaily is a global Earth intelligence company delivering science-grade, AI-ready data and analytics for broad-area monitoring and change detection. The company's integrated Earth observation system combines the purpose-built EarthDaily Constellation, advanced data processing, AI foundation models and domain-specific analytics to transform large-scale environmental observations into decision-ready intelligence.
Designed to produce consistent, scientifically calibrated measurements at scale, EarthDaily's technology helps governments and enterprises detect and understand change, assess evolving risks and act with greater confidence. Its capabilities support critical applications across agriculture, insurance, mining, forestry, environmental monitoring, defence and national security.
To learn more, visit earthdaily.com and follow EarthDaily on LinkedIn (@EarthDaily) and X (@EarthDailyA).
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EarthDaily
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A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/802e6d49-b8bd-4dc4-960b-27b6b5fe4e78
