Landsat program
Landsat 4 was the first satellite in the Landsat program to incorporate the Thematic Mapper (TM) sensor. The Landsat TM sensor is able to gather seven bands of data as opposed to the four bands of data collected from the Multispectral Scanner. In addition to having three more bands of data to work with, scientists are able to view the TM data at a much higher resolution than with MSS. Bands 1–5 and 7 each have a spatial resolution of while the MSS is only capable of a by resolution. Band 6 (which is a thermal infrared band) has a maximum spatial resolution of . The data rate for TM data was 84.9Mbit/s, via an X-band transmitter to modernized ground antennas.