The Operational Land Imager (OLI) aboard Landsats 8 and 9 measures visible, near-infrared, and shortwave infrared light. Each satellite images Earth’s entire land surface every 16 days while providing sufficient resolution to distinguish features like urban centers, farms, forests, and other land uses. Together, the satellites have an 8-day acquisition repeat cycle.

The OLI aboard Landsat 9 is a copy of the one on Landsat 8. One difference is its depth of data. Landsat 8’s OLI downlinks 12-bit data, while Landsat 9 downlinks 14-bit data. That means, for Landsat 9 data, there are 16,384 possible values in each pixel in each wavelength of light. Landsat 8 provides 4,096 possible values. The benefit of this improvement is that Landsat 9’s OLI detects more subtle differences, especially over darker areas such as water or dense forests.