A case in point is from NASA’s Landsat engagement team, Your Name In Landsat. Type in a text string, and it will spell it out in Earth features seen by the imaging satellites, that resemble letters.

“The Landsat community is treating push-broom sensors like we’ve been building them for years,” says Cramer. “That’s a tribute to EO-1.” The accumulation of small tweaks has had a large benefit for ...