Landsat 5 is an Earth Observation satellite developed by NASA and launched on 1 March 1984 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, USA. Managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (1984 to 2000) and by the U.S. Geological Survey (2001-13)as part of the Landsat Program, it has completed more than 150,000 orbits of the Earth and sent back more than 2.5 million images of the Earth’s surface. On 21 December 2012 the USGS announced Landsat 5 was to be decommissioned after the failure of a gyroscope.