LandSat7 image of the San Gorgonio Pass area, Riverside County, California.

In the early 1970's, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) entered into a partnership with the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) to provide repetitive global images of the earth's landmasses taken from a satellite flown at an altitude of approximately 438 miles. Onboard the 1999 Landsat7 satellite, the instrument used is an 8-band multispectral scanning radiometer that produces high-resolution images of the earth using bandwidths between 15 and 60-meter pixel resolution.

20世纪70年代初，美国地质调查局（U.S. Geological Survey, USGS）与美国国家航空航天局（National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA）达成合作，旨在提供由飞行高度约438英里的卫星拍摄的地球陆地区域的重复全球影像。1999年发射的陆地卫星7号（Landsat 7）搭载的仪器为8波段多光谱扫描辐射计，该设备可生成像素分辨率介于15至60米之间的高分辨率地球影像。