This paper looks at the status of earth observation data continuity issues.There are several factors affecting the continuity of global data sets which will impact our ability to monitor global change,land use/land cover changes,etc.due to a gap in data acquisition from satellites such as the LANDSAT series. The paper will examine the status of planned remote satellite missions in North America,Europe and Asia,and examine the effect on monitoring activities.Major funding and technical issues will severely limit the number of American,Canadian and European satellites over the coming decade.Fortunately the extra launches of new satellites by China,India,Japan and some other countries will compensate this to some degree.However,issues of data sharing,data availability etc will continue to cause difficulties to researchers for obtaining consistent,long-term data sets.These topics and issues will be discussed in this presentation.