If you haven’t heard of Virginia Norwood yet, now is the time to do so. An aerospace pioneer whose career would have been historic even if it had not triumphed over misogynistic discrimination, she invented the Landsat satellite program that monitors the Earth’s surface today. Norwood passed away on March 27 at the age of 96. NASA another New York Times.

She accomplished all this despite considerable opposition from the male-dominated industry before and after her rise. Despite her obvious talent, many employers refused to hire her after graduating from MIT. For example, Sikorsky Aircraft told her that she would never pay her required salary equivalent to the lowest rank in the civil service. At another food lab she applied to, she was asked to promise not to get pregnant as a condition of her job. (She withdrew her statement.) Finally, gun manufacturer Remington praised her “brilliant” ideas in an interview, but told her he was hiring a person instead.

Her career finally took off after she landed jobs at the US Army Signal Corps Laboratories (where she developed the radar reflector for weather balloons) and Sylvania Electronic Defense Labs (where she set up the company’s first antenna lab). Norwood began working in the 1950s as part of a small group of women at the Hughes Aircraft Company, where she gained a reputation as a resourceful problem solver. “She said, ‘I was known as someone who could solve unsolvable problems,'” her daughter Naomi Norwood told NASA. “For people to bring things here, even parts of other projects.”

In the late 1960s, the director of the Geological Survey wanted to take photographs of the Earth from space to help manage land resources; in partnership with NASA, a plan was developed to send satellites into space. Then, while working with Hughes’ team of cutting-edge designers in Space and Communications, Norwood shaped the idea that defined her legacy. She gathered input from experts in agriculture, meteorology and geology to develop a scanner to capture various light and energy spectra. While it used existing technology built for agricultural observations (at a lower altitude), it has adapted the technology to meet the goals of the Geological Survey and NASA.

However, it ran into numerous obstacles trying to find a place for its multispectral scanning system (MSS) on the launch satellite. It was already carrying a huge three-camera system developed by RCA using television tube technology, which the agencies saw as the main source of the picture. In order to get the MSS on board, Norwood was instructed to reduce it to no more than 100 pounds, a significant reduction; the RCA system occupied most of the 4,000 lb satellite. payload.

She reduced the device to only record four energy bands (instead of the original seven) to ensure that it would be used in flight as a secondary measurement system. The satellite was launched on July 23, 1972, and MSS took its first images of Oklahoma in Ouachita. Mountains – two days later. The results exceeded all expectations, prompting a quick rethink of the satellite payload hierarchy. Norwood’s system performed better and was more reliable than RCA’s clumsy design, which caused power surges and had to be shut down for two weeks after the mission began.

Landsat quickly became the de facto method for surveying the Earth’s surface. Norwood continued to refine the system, leading the development of Landsat 2, 3, 4 and 5. Landsat 8 and 9, the current versions tracking the effects of climate change today, are still based on its original concept. Her other projects included leading the microwave group at Hughes Aircraft’s rocket lab and developing ground communications equipment for NASA’s Surveyor lunar lander.

She reportedly had no problem with the nickname “Landsat mother” given to her by her peers. “Yes, I like it and it’s appropriate,” she said. “I created it, I created it, and I fought for it.”

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