GRAA NEWSLETTER
P.O. Box 1184, Greenbelt, MD 20768-1184

IMPORTANT DATES

COMMENTS FROM TONY COMBERIATE, GRAA PRESIDENT: Our January luncheon speaker was Dr. Compton (Jim) Tucker, Senior Scientist from GSFC’s Earth Science Division. His presentation was entitled, “How GSFC’s Bill Nordberg started the satellite record of global vegetation: NOAA POES to EOS MODIS.” Jim’s research on the spectral reflectivity of vegetation began in field work while in graduate school at Colorado State University. In 1975 he joined Goddard initially as a NAS Post-Doc under Bill Nordberg, then as an employee. Nordberg’s vision for Goddard was that the Science >> Instruments >> Missions >> Science, etc. in an ever-improving cycle. Nordberg had proposed and launched the ERTS-1 (Landsat-1) satellite with a four-band Multispectral Scanner as the first land surface monitor. Jim continued his field work on crops at Goddard and found that plant productivity could be measured by the difference in leaf productivity in two narrow bands (now called NDVI – Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) in the red and near IR. Lou Walters and Charlie Schnetzler of the Biospheres Division recognized that this technique had potential for global crop productivity monitoring on a daily basis if implemented on future satellites. The Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) instrument on polar orbiting NOAA spacecraft provided daily coverage. However, the instrument’s near-IR spectral band was so broad that it covered both NDVI bands and cancelled the vegetation signal. Jim convinced NOAA to modify the bands and this new field of agricultural radiometry from space was born. These operational AVHRR instruments have continuously been in orbit for 40 years on NOAA and ESA satellites.

In the early ’90s, Shelby Tilford and Dixon Butler from NASA HQ and NCAR’s Francis Bretherton organized the Earth Observing System to conduct research through advanced observations using state-of-the-art remote sensing instruments. These included the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments on the TERRA and AQUA spacecraft. These MODIS instruments have been extremely successful given their longevity, reliability, and extensive spectral bands. The view the entire Earth surface (oceans, land, and the cryosphere) every 1-2 days. Their data us critical in studying melting ice sheets, the oceans, and land processes including NDVI. The latest generation of NOAA operational satellites now includes less capable but expensive Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instruments as a successor to AVHRR and MODIS.

Global crop productivity monitoring is one of Goddard’s biggest success stories. MODIS and AVHRR have been extremely useful for humanitarian purposes, including predicting and defining agricultural production, grain shortfalls, famine early warnings, and alleviating other catastrophes. MODIS actually defeated the desert locust, which had been a plague throughout history. Each locust eats its weight in green leaf material every day. By using MODIS data, the green areas could be identified and surveyed for locusts. The locust population was controlled by treating just these areas with insecticides.

Jim also showed the long-term Australian NVDI record and the effects of a serious drought that developed in 2019, the cause of the recent catastrophic fires captured in thermal images from the fire channel on MODIS.

Jim’s Final Message was to keep the cycle of science to instruments to missions to science going (and to do it better than JPL!).

FROM THE GODDARD ARCHIVES — IT HAPPENED IN FEBRUARY : San Marco 4 satellite (aka: San Marco C-2) was launched from a Scout rocket on February 18, 1974, from the San Marco Platform located in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Kenya, Africa. The scientific objective was to measure the diurnal variations of the equatorial neutral thermosphere density, composition, and temperature for correlation with simultaneous Atmospheric Explorer C data. The Italian-built spacecraft was part of a cooperative space effort between NASA and the Italian Space Commission and was the fourth to be launched. In total, five Italian satellites were launched via the program between the early ’60s and the late ’80s, all using Scout rockets. The first satellite was San Marco 1, which flew from Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) on December 15, 1964 with the remainder conducted from the San Marco Equatorial Range. With that first launch, Italy became the third country in the world to operate its own satellite, after the Soviet Union and the United States. The fifth and last satellite, San Marco D/L, was launched on March 25, 1988. The San Marco program was approved by the Italian government in October ’61 and signed a formal MOU with NASA in May ’62. Test flights using Shotput rockets and the first San Marco satellite would be launched from the Wallops Flight Facility as training for the Italian ground crew in preparation for future launches from the San Marco Platform.

REMEMBERING OUR FORMER COLLEAGUES:

• Orman O. Bloxom, of Snow Hill, MD passed away on December 18, 2019. Until 1982, Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) was under the management of Langley Research Center prior to changing management affiliation to GSFC. His assignment from ’82 through ’88 was in the Engineering Division of the Suborbital Projects & Operations Directorate. He was transferred to the Operations Division of the same directorate in ’89 and continued at WFF until retiring in ’95.
• Nancy E. Boggess, of Boulder, CO passed away on November 29, 2019. She was initially employed at NASA Headquarters in 1968 and assigned the responsibility for infrared astronomy programs. Under her guidance, the NASA program grew to include the Kuiper Airborne Observatory (a converted C141 jet that carried a one-meter telescope useful for infrared observations), balloon flights, major advances in infrared detectors, and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), the first satellite devoted to researching infrared measurements. In later years she was instrumental in getting NASA to launch the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) and served as Deputy Project Scientist to COBE prior to being transferred to GSFC in the late ’80s to help launch COBE in ’89. Although she took astronomy classes, her undergraduate major was mathematics. It was not until she was close to graduating that she realized she wanted to apply her math background to astronomy, and went to graduate school in astrophysics at the University of Michigan, where she met and married Dr. Albert Boggess III (who, coincidentally, served for decades as a GSFC scientist). She was also a member of the COBE team helping to develop COBE, which eventually led to John Mather being awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for precise measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation that was left over from the Big Bang. Both she and her husband, Albert, retired in ’93 and then traveled the world to pursue their hobby of bird watching.
• Bruce R. (Bob) Pincus, of Huntsville, AL passed away on January 1^st, 2020. He was employed at GSFC in 1963 and initially assigned to the Spacecraft Integration & Sounding Rocket Division of the Office of Space Science & Satellite Applications. In ’65 the Office was renamed the Technology Directorate, where he remained for the next six years. In ’71, he became a Section Head in the Sounding Rocket Division, where he remained for five years. In ’76, he became Acting Head of the Instrumentation Branch of the Engineering Directorate (and later Branch Head) until ’86. In ’87, he was promoted to Chief of the Systems Development Office in the Special Payloads Division of the Engineering Directorate until retiring in ’92. He continued to work at GSFC as a contractor for a few years before relocating to Huntsville, AL to be a consultant.
• Clarence L. Wade, Jr., of Arlington, VA passed away on November 20, 2019. He came to GSFC in 1959 as one of its pioneers as a Mathematician and Computer Scientist and became involved with developing numerical analysis algorithms and science data processing for over four decades. He made significant contributions to the initial programs to determine the orbital characteristics of the Russian Sputnik satellite and more. During the ’60s and ’70s, he contributed to developing orbit determination and particle scattering algorithms by GSFC’s Solar Physics & Astrophysics departments. In the ’80s and ’90s, he played a key role in developing science data archives for the International Ultraviolet Explorer and retired in 2005.

ELECTION OF GRAA BOARD OF DIRECTORS: The election of the seven-member GRAA Board of Directors (BOD) is scheduled to occur during the GRAA Luncheon on April 14. Six of the current BOD members (Tony Comberiate, Arlin Krueger, Jackie Gasch, Barbara Hamilton, Jan Kalshoven, and Ron Muller have opted to serve for another two-year term; however, other interested members living within commuting distance of the Greenbelt campus may contact Dave Moulton, Newsletter Editor, to nominate themselves or another willing member to be included on the ballot. Please pass the name(s) along to Dave by forwarding him an email at davidlmoulton@comcast.net or calling him at 301-249-1783 no later than February 28^th.

TREASURER'S REPORT: Treasurer Jackie Gasch received tax-deductible donations from L. Henry Anderson, John Bosworth, Dempsey B. Bruton, S. Richard Costa, James A. Costrell, Karen Hope Defazio, James M. Gavura, Peter S. P. Hui (in memory of Ralph Shapiro), Patricia M. Mackey, Michael C. McCumber, Robert McIntyre, Karl G. Peters, Colleen Quinn-House, Christopher Scherer (in memory of David Harris), and William F. Townsend.

THOUGHT FOR FEBRUARY: Did you hear about the new restaurant that recently opened on the Moon? Apparently the food’s out of this world, but there’s no atmosphere!