Landsat 2's capabilities revolutionized fields like geology, agriculture, and environmental science, offering a new perspective on Earth's systems.

Megan Black[1] summarizes it perfectly stating "As Third World nationalists grew consistently if not uniformly disenchanted with American and foreign operators in their nations, many mining companies sought to salve increasing hostilities and attendant risks of expropriation" While the invention would likely save countless lives, it would still be used to exploit the natural resources of the developing world.

The spacecraft originally carried a designation of ERTS-B (Earth Resource Technology Satellite B) but was renamed "Landsat 2" prior to its launch on January 22, 1975.

The objective of the satellite was to acquire global, seasonal data in medium resolution from a near-polar, Sun-synchronous orbit.

The satellite, built by General Electric, acquired data with the Return Beam Vidicon (RBV) and the Multispectral Scanner (MSS).

Landsat 2 was originally designated as ERTS-B (Earth Resources Technology Satellite-B) and was renamed prior to launch.

[3] The primary objective of the MSS was to acquire global, seasonal data in medium resolution from a near-polar, sun-synchronous orbit.

Two solar panel arrays that were 4 m (13 ft) long each, with single axis articulation, generated power for the spacecraft.

The satellite transmitted data back to the ground with S-Band and very high frequency (VHF) transmitters, at a rate of 15 Mbit/s and 6-bit quantization.

[8] As in the case of its predecessor Landsat 1, the satellite's payload included two remote sensing instruments, the Return Beam Vidicon (RBV) and the Multispectral Scanner (MSS).

Band 7 was the most proficient at sensing through atmospheric haze, and identified water and land boundaries, vegetation, and landforms.

Level-1 data takes 1–3 days to process, and the user will receive multiple files that they can then piece together to generate an RGB image.