The Landsat program has a long history of providing satellite remote sensing information to the world, over 28 years. The first seven Landsat spacecraft have collected the longest continuous space-based remote sensing dataset in the world. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) are working together on the next mission in the Landsat series, called the LDCM.

NASA and the USGS are proceeding with a two-step procurement to accomplish the delivery of Landsat continuity data to the U.S. Government. The timeline shown below represents a top level summary of the mission timeline. The mission is realized through a sequence of phases, Formulation and Implementation, with the goal of acquiring the first data in 2006. The Request For Proposals (RFP) for the Formulation phase was released November 1, 2001.