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Lift off! We have a lift off!
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Music begins. Announcer slightly muted: Thirty-two minutes past the hour.
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Lift off of Apollo 11.
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Narrator: In the 1960s, the United States decided to venture forth to the moon's surface.
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This new vantage point of space allowed us to look back at Earth's surface
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in wonder.
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Photographs taken by astronauts in the Apollo and Gemini
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fascinated the world.
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And inspired a few to ask the question:
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Could space be the solution for regular Earth observations?
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One piece of technology, dating to 1968,
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has since defined Earth remote sensing from space.
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It was initially doubted, but the little scanner that could defied
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all cynics, to give us what we know today as the Landsat Program.
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This instrument, called the Multispectral scanner, or MSS,
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was designed and championed by Virginia T. Norwood.
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Earning her the moniker, the Mother of Landsat.
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Sam Goward: The Landsat system is an amazing one, that makes you wonder if the MSS System
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hadn't been onboard and operating, what would've happend to Landsat?
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Narrator: Virginia Norwood graduated from MIT
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with a degree in mathematical physics.
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Soon after, she developed a radar reflector that discovered previously
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untrackable winds.
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Her continuous successes got her a position
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at Hughes Aircraft Company.
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She was amongst the first women to join their technical staff.
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Where she pioneered the first spaced-based Multispectral Scanner.
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Naomi Norwood: She said...
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..." I was kind of known as the person who could solve impossible problems."
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So, people would bring things to her, even pieces of other projects.
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Narrator: Norwood was working at Hughes when NASA initiated
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the Earth Resources Technology Satellite mission in 1967.
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As scientists at the University of Michigan and Purdue demonstrated,
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the future of land imaging was multi-spectral.
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They used this developing technology to assess
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the planet's surface on a more local scale.
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Multispectral devices like the MSS measure energy from the electromagnetic spectrum,
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including both visible and infrared light.
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The sensor acts passivley, recording certain wavelengths of light
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reflected off the Earth's surface.
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These measurements are recorded digitally and transmitted to ground stations
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to be analyzed pixel by pixel - something that had never been done before.
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However, NASA and USGS both had reservations.
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The MSS was new technology, and they favored the Return Beam Vidicon (the RBV),
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designed by RCA to map the moon for the Apollo Missions.
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The RBV used television tube technology to create a system of cameras
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each filtered to a specific set of wavelengths or bands.
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They were limited to the blue-green, orange-red and near infrared bands.
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The system was analog, limited, and soon to be dated.
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So, how to convince them to try multispectral technology?
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Virginia Norwood: ...people felt much more comfortable with that
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even if they didn't understand the ramifications.
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And so we felt that there was a real bias because of that.
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Narrator: With the help of other innovators like Jack Lansing and Webb Howe,
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the prototype designed by Virginia Norwood was created for only a hundred thousand dollars
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- less than a million dollars today.
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Her original designs included a scanner that looked at 6 bands
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of the electromagnetic spectrum.
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However, because the more trusted RBV system was heavier and larger
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taking up more of the satellite, she had to cut back to 4 bands.
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Naomi Norwood: And really, only a tiny corner of the spacecraft was
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was allotted to the tiny little multispectral scanner.
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And no one knew precisely how it was going to perform,
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whether it would even work,
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whether the mirror would work, whether the digitized data would work.
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From the get go, her superiors were saying
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oh, you know handwringing that "This was gonna be a problem!"
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There was so much about it that was novel.
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And there was so much skepticism.
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Narrator: To allay NASA and USGS jitters about
the much-doubted scanner,
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the prototype was stuck onto the back of a truck
and taken on a California roadtrip.
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Virginia Norwood: This was because Joe Arlauskas said,
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"Nobody believes that scanner will work.
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I think you'd better - you'd better give us some assurance."
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And, so, Jack Lansing and a couple people took it out on a truck.
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And, uh...
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and he was an outdoors type anyway. So he just thought it was great to get
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Tahoe and Yosemite and all those places.
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Narrator: The images were spectacular.
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The Half-Dome image still hangs on Norwood's wall today.
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On July 23rd, 1972, the Earth Resources Technology Satellite launched into orbit with Norwood's sensor on board.
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Just 14 days after launch,
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a power surge caused by RBV electronics physically rocked the spacecraft and the RBV was immediately shut off.
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The first clouds free image from the MSS was the Ouachita Mountains in Southeastern Oklahoma.
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Chuck Robinove: I looked at those images and tears came to my eyes.
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And I said it's everything we hoped for and more than we expected.
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It was one of, it was, I can say the highlight of my career
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and one of the major highlights of my life was to see that
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and to see that it worked and to think about what we could do with it.
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Sam Goward: Virginia Norwood - incredibly innovative,
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pulled off something that nobody thought would occur.
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Narrator: Virginia Norwood's MSS became the standard for the Landsat Satellites.
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A 7-band sensor, a refinement of her original 6-band design,
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flew on Landsats 4 and 5.
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And went on to shape much of space-based land remote sensing,
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a field that has only grown since then.
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Fifty years later, using technology that has evolved from Norwood's original concepts,
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Landsat satellites are still showing us more about the planet we love.
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In 2021, Landsat 9 launched into orbit.
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The data, now freely available to everyone,
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will bring about new scientific advances helping us to understand
our changing planet.
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NASA Meatball
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USGS Logo
USGS: Science for a Changing World
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Landsat is a joint program of NASA and USGS:
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www.nasa.gov/landsat
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www.usgs.gov/core-science-systems/nli/landsat