Virginia Norwood Recognized by National Inventors Hall of Fame
January 22, 2025
Virginia Norwood is being posthumously recognized for designing the Landsat multispectral scanner system.
Virginia Norwood is being posthumously recognized for designing the Landsat multispectral scanner system.
Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey have developed a new way to measure ocean depth, or bathymetry, in shallow nearshore environments using Landsat data.
Two months before the launch of Landsat 1, the engineering model of the satellite’s multispectral scanner system went on a California road trip.
New research shows that while some Antarctic ice shelves have been thinning since at least the 1970s, widespread thinning accelerated in the 1990s.
Virginia T. Norwood, a founding figure in the field of satellite land imaging, died on Sunday, March 26, 2023, at age 96.
July 23, 2022, was designated as Landsaturday by the U.S. Senate in recognition of the 50th anniversary of the Landsat Program.
Virginia T. Norwood, known as the person who could solve impossible problems, played a crucial role in the development of the first space-based multispectral scanner instrument that flew on Landsat 1 and made the mission a success.
Since its debut, Landsat has amassed over 10 million images. These images, also called scenes, show current snapshots of land and coasts, but pair with images of years past and they also reveal changes through time – glaciers slowly disappearing, or urban spaces sprawling across the landscape.
Landsat satellites have been reliably returning images of Earth’s land surface for fifty years, providing novel insights about the planet we call home.
Top honors were bestowed upon Virginia Norwood in recognition of her far-reaching impact on the field of remote sensing.
In August 1975, Jacques Cousteau and his divers helped determine if Landsat could measure the depth of shallow ocean waters.
Evolving technology, free data and robust calibration have helped make Landsat the cornerstone of global land imaging.
Off the northeastern coast of Labrador, in the northern most reaches of the Newfoundland & Labrador province lies Landsat Island, an icy isle inhabited only by polar bears. How did such a place get named after a satellite?
