The Mother of Landsat
Video about the 50 years Landsat program from USGS
Today is International Women in Engineering Day – a commemoration that is just 12 years old. Long before there was any specific recognition for women in engineering careers, many women were quietly making an impact with visionary thinking and hard work.
For example, Virginia Norwood designed the first space-based multispectral scanner that flew on the first Landsat—an instrument that went on to define many aspects of modern remote sensing.
Landsat satellites gather images of Earth by measuring energy that is naturally reflected and emitted from the surface. The satellites fly 438 miles above the Earth’s surface and complete one orbit every 99 minutes, for 14 ½ orbits per day. The images and data have been available to all countries around the world since the beginning of the Landsat program in 1972. Four receiving stations across the globe receive satellite data and transmit it to the EROS processing center in South Dakota.
Virginia Norwood at the Storm Detector Radar Set at the Army Signal Corps Laboratories in New Jersey
Data generated by Norwood’s multispectral scanner led to immediate and fundamental changes to practices of the cartographic and geographic communities. Country borders were re-drawn and previously unknown islands were discovered. Each launch of a new LandSat included innovations in imaging that have helped discover lithium deposits, monitor water quality, manage forests, and track glacial recession, flooding, population growth – and that’s just a small list of the rich trove of data available from LandSat.
And that’s not all
The space-based multispectral scanner has had a profound impact on our understanding of earth, but it was not the only technology that Virginia Norwood invented.
Even as a child, Norwood had a great interest in physics, a study encouraged by her father who was an Army officer, had a master's degree in physics, and later taught at Carnegie Tech. Because of her high math scores, her high school counselor suggested she become a librarian. Instead, she went to MIT and earned a degree in mathematical physics in 1947.
After graduating, Ms. Norwood struggled to find work. When interviewing at Sikorsky Aircraft in Connecticut, she asked for a salary that matched the lowest rank in the civil service, but was told the company would never pay a woman that much.
Photo of a mock-up of the Surveyor spacecraft taken in 1966
She also interviewed at Remington, the gun manufacturer, where she described how a staff mathematician could improve the company’s operations. The hiring manager hired a man instead – after telling her that her idea was brilliant.
Desperate, she took a job selling women’s blouses at a department store in New Haven, Conn.[1]
In 1948, she took a job as researcher at the U.S. Army Camp Evans Signal Corps Laboratories in New Jersey. Here, she designed a radar reflector for weather balloons to track winds at high altitudes, which allowed long-term weather predictions for the first time.
By 1953 she became a microwave radar researcher at Sylvania Electronic Defense Laboratories in California. In 1954, Norwood joined Hughes Aircraft Co. in California. She became leader of the Microwave Group, where she designed the microwave transmitter which allowed Surveyor 1, a moon lander, to send images of the lunar surface back to Earth. Later, she took on the role of manager of Earth Resources Requirements in the NASA Systems Division, and senior scientist and laboratory engineer in the Electro-Optics Systems Group — a position she held from 1977 until her retirement in 1989.[2]
Norwood retired in 1989. A biographical article published by NASA in 2020 referred to her as "The Mother of Landsat"[3]. When asked if she liked the nickname Mother of Landsat, she told NASA: "Yes. I like it, and it's apt. I created it; I birthed it; and I fought for it."[4]
Norwood passed away on March 26, 2023 (aged 96).
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