U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) - A bureau of the Department of the Interior. USGS was established in 1879 following several Federally sponsored independent natural resource surveys of the West and Midwest. The Department of the Interior has responsibility for most of our nationally owned public lands and natural resources. The USGS monitors resources such as energy, minerals, water, land, agriculture, and irrigation. The resulting scientific information contributes to environmental-policy decision-making and public safety. For example, USGS identifies flood- and landslide-prone areas and maintains maps of the United States.

Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) Projection - A widely used map projection that employs a series of identical projections around the world in the mid-latitude areas, each spanning six degrees of longitude and oriented to a meridian. This projection is characterized by its conformality; that is, it preserves angular relationships and scale and it easily allows a rectangular grid to be superimposed on it. Many worldwide topographic and planimetric maps at scales ranging between 1:24,000 and 1:250,000 use this projection.

Uplink - A connection through which signals transmit to a satellite.

Upper Scene Corners - The corners associated with the trailing edge (first scan) of a scene. For descending path scenes, the upper left corner corresponds to the northwest corner of a scene and the upper right corner corresponds to the northeast corner of a scene. For ascending path scenes, the upper left corner corresponds to the southeast corner of a scene and the upper right corner corresponds to the southwest corner of a scene. These mappings hold for the band file geolocation fields and the metadata file.