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