Landsat 6 was designed to continue the Landsat program and carried an improved suite of instruments. However, it failed to achieve orbit during launch, and forced the continued operation of the failing Landsat 4 and 5 vehicles. Spacecraft: Structure of aluminum with graphite struts. Hydrazine propulsion system. Single solar array with 1-axis articulation produces 1430 W (BOL), Two NiCd batteries provide 100 AHr total. Data stored on-board using tape recorders for direct downlink to ground stations at 85 Mbps.3-axis stabilised, zero momentum with control to 0.01 deg using reaction wheels. Payload: Carried Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM) designed to provide 15 meter resolution in the panchromatic band and 30 meters resolution in the multispectral bands.
Financial/Operational:
General Electric/Hughes received $ 398 million contract to develop the satellite on October 26 1992 including Hughes' $ 120 million infrared thematic mapper.

Design Life: 5 years. Total Length: 4.0 m.

General Electric received the $ 398 million contract to develop the satellite, including Hughes' $ 120 million infrared thematic mapper.

• 5 - Krebs, Gunter, Gunter's Space Page, University of Frankfurt, 1996. HTML when accessed: http://www.skyrocket.de/space