The Politics of Commercialization and the Near Collapse of the Landsat Civil Remote Sensing Program, 1978–1992

In 1972, NASA launched the Earth Resources Technology Satellite-A (later renamed Landsat 1), the first civilian earth observation satellite. Beginning as an experimental project of NASA, with support from the Department of the Interior, the space agency launched three Landsats, which successfully gathered medium resolution imagery across several spectral bands of the Earth’s terrestrial and coastal surface. By 1979, the Carter Administration began to position NASA’s Landsat program for commercialization using two Presidential Directives. The directives moved Landsat management from NASA to NOAA and stated the long-term goal to ultimately build an earth remote sensing industry with Landsat as a foundation. The stated goals were that the industry would operate all activities from research and development of new instruments to data processing and image sales. President Reagan accelerated commercialization directing Department of Commerce to issue a request for proposals for private sector Landsat management while slashing budgets for further Landsats. The Reagan Administration complicated the commercialization process by also targeting weather and oceanic sensing satellites. The RFP received few suitors and the White House faced vehement protest against weather satellite commercialization, straining the process. In 1984 Congress passed the Land Remote Sensing Commercialization Act which set lofty yet contradictory goals while offering minimal government subsidy. A consortium of RCA and Hughes won the bid for Landsat but the arrangement quickly fell into disarray as Commerce consistently withheld subsidies. By 1989, mismanagement of the commercialization effort nearly unraveled Landsat by driving away data users. However, two variables set Landsat more favorably toward commercialization: the end of the Cold War and the eventual passage of the Land Remote Sensing Policy Act of 1992, which essentially repealed the Commercialization Act and increased government coordination. The 1998 passage of the Commercial Space Act ensured “the continuity of Landsat quality data” and facilitated further coordination of civil remote sensing. This chapter argues that commercialization of Landsat, and more broadly civil remote sensing, is a highly political, non-linear process requiring clear definitions of what functions are public goods and private commodities and policy implementation. Landsat commercialization led to cost-prohibitive data products and stagnated launch schedules such that commercialization itself nearly drove away its own market. It also argues that an important consideration of the symposium is not only to more deeply understand NASA’s relationship with commercial space but also to better assess NASA’s ability to coordinate within the government to better foster commercial space activities.