Virginia Norwood, known as "The Mother of Landsat", passes away

Category : Obituaries Published on: April 24 2023

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Virginia Tower Norwood, a founding figure in the field of satellite land imaging, fondly known as “The Mother of Landsat”, an American aerospace engineer, inventor, and physicist, passed away in Topanga, California, United States of America (USA), on 26th March 2023, at the age of 96.
Virginia Norwood started her career working on weather radar at the U.S. Army Signal Corps Laboratories in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.
Later, she served at Hughes Aircraft Company for 36 years on a range of projects that included antenna design, communications links, optics, and Landsat scanners.
She invented the scanner which has been used to map and study the Earth from space for more than 50 years. She oversaw the development of Landsat 2, 3, 4 and 5.
A biographical article published by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 2020 referred to Virginia Norwood as “The Mother of Landsat“.
In 1979, Norwood received the William T. Pecora Award. In 2021, Norwood was given an Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.