Earth scientists and researchers, the Landsat community, the NASA community, and countless others are remembering physicist, engineer, pioneer, and patent holder Virginia T. Norwood, the Mother of Landsat, who passed away Sunday, March 26, 2023, at the age of 96. According to the Landsat Science site, "In 1965, director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), William Pecora, proposed the idea of a remote sensing satellite program to gather facts about the natural resources of our planet." Fast forward: "In 1972, Landsat 1 launched carrying [Ms. Norwood's] Multispectral Scanner System (MSS)." In September 2021, at the launch of Landsat 9 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, Christopher Shuman (615/UMBC) and Valerie Casasanto (615/UMBC) had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Norwood. (They also recently participated in the 50th anniversary of the Landsat program in July 2022.)
Dr. Shuman, glaciologist and senior research scientist with GESTAR II, shared this Earth Observatory feature, which he contributed to and which uses Landsat data from the USGS, images that are 50 years apart and provide valuable insight to changes in Greenland's peripheral glaciers: "A Half-Century of Loss in Northwest Greenland." He also provided his study, "50 Years of Landsat - Ice Cover Changes, East Greenland, from 1972 to 2022" (see below).
Ms. Casasanto, ICESat-2 mission outreach lead and JCET member, shared that she is "definitely inspired by her as a female from a time when the field was predominantly male, and who was doing something absolutely amazing for the world." She frequently uses Landsat data as it complements the ICESat-2 elevation data. Additionally, for a 2020 article about Landsat working with Jacques Cousteau, she translated the interview from French with the chief diver.
We hope you will take the time to read this piece from NPR, to visit the Earth Observatory site, where Landsat images are shared from all over the world, and to appreciate the beauty of our planet and Ms. Norwood's legacy.
(Photo: At Landsat 9 launch, Valerie Casasanto; Virginia Norwood; Allison Nussbaum, Landsat Outreach Team; Ginger Butcher, Landsat Communications Lead. Photo provided by V. Casasanto.)
