On August 7th, 1973, the Earth Resources and Science Data Center known as EROS, is dedicated.
In 1966, the Department of the Interior announced it was launching a new project. The long-term goal was to gather data about the Earth's natural resources using satellites equipped with sophisticated remote sensing instruments.
When the idea of EROS was conceived, it was determined that the operation needed to be centrally located for receiving data as satellites passed over the United States. Due in part to the role played by the late Senator Karl Mundt, a site for the facility was chosen just west of Garretson South Dakota.
The facility began operation in January 1974 and today, EROS has about 600 government and contractor employees. It is equipped with the largest mainframe computer in the state and is also one of the largest computer facilities used by U.S. Geological Survey.
EROS operates the Landsat satellite program with NASA, and maintains the largest civilian collection of images of the Earth’s land surface in existence, including tens of millions of satellite images. Scientists from around the world, including the staff at EROS, use data from the archives for a variety of data applications and research programs.
And the EROS History Project website preserves historical information dating back to 1966. The site is organized by decade and each has additional categories such as Newsletters, Reports and other archives.
Production help is provided by Brad Tennant, Dakota Wesleyan University.