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The Landsat archive has added its 8 millionth scene.

This stunning image was captured by Landsat 8 on July 28, 2018. It shows the coastline of Nordaustlandet, the second-largest island in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago.

Most of the island is covered by massive white ice caps. The exposed rocky coast appears in reddish brown, peppered with blue and black lakes and flecks of white.

The tiny island of Storøya is visible to the east. More than half of Storøya is also covered in ice.

More than 1,100 Landsat scenes are added every day to the archive at the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

The archive added its 7 millionth Landsat scene just over one year ago, in June 2017. The image of northeastern Alaska shows part of the Brooks Range, the western border of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and a treeless coastal plain.

Both Landsat images are part of the Earth’s longest continuously-acquired collection of space-based, moderate-resolution land remote sensing data. The first Landsat scenes were collected in 1972.

Landsat data are available for download at no charge from EarthExplorer, GloVis, and the LandsatLook viewer.

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