EarthDaily has been awarded a $3 million task order from NASA to explore how commercial Earth observation data can work alongside Landsat, the long-running U.S. satellite program that has monitored the planet's land surface for decades. The contract is aimed at determining whether commercial imagery can complement government missions in a single, coordinated system.
Under the task order, NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey will compare observations from the EarthDaily Constellation with Landsat data. The evaluation will also examine whether the commercial constellation can support AI-ready data products and future hybrid architectures in which government and private satellites share the work of gathering environmental information.
The company published its announcement on October 26, 2026, from Maple Grove, Minnesota. The announcement was accompanied by satellite imagery of burn scars left by the Bald Range wildfire near Summerland, British Columbia, Canada, captured on September 17, 2026, which illustrates the kind of land-surface change that such satellites are designed to track.
The project reflects a broader shift in how governments obtain Earth observation data. Rather than building and operating every satellite themselves, agencies are increasingly testing whether data from commercial providers can meet scientific and operational standards and fill gaps between government missions. Landsat, operated jointly by NASA and the USGS, has provided a continuous record of land imagery since the 1970s, making its compatibility with new sources a central question for researchers and resource managers.
For the commercial side, the award offers validation that its constellation data may be useful to federal science and monitoring programs. For the government side, the work is intended to clarify whether commercial data can be integrated without compromising the consistency that long-term environmental records require. The outcome of the evaluation will determine how far such hybrid approaches can be extended in future missions.
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