Recent Imagery
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New Terra Project Scientist
New Terra Project Scientist
A valued member of the Earth Observing System (EOS) and the Terra team is leaving NASA. Marc Imhoff, the Terra Project Scientist since 2005, is departing after a 32-year career at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) to become Deputy Director of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Joint Global Change Research Institute (located at the University of Maryland, College Park). Imhoff’s other EOS involvement included being Instrument Manager for the EOS Project Office in the late 1980s and an EOS Interdisciplinary Science Team Member. From 2001 to 2004 he served as the Earth System Science Pathfinder Program Project Scientist. Imhoff’s research has spanned studies of vegetation, to targeting malaria vector breeding habitats in the tropics, to developing one of the first satellite-based methodologies to assess the vulnerabilities of populations to climate change and food production. We are grateful to Imhoff for his many years of service to NASA and the EOS, and wish him all the best in his new endeavor.
Kurtis Thome will be succeeding Imhoff. Thome came to GSFC in 2008 from a tenured position in the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona, with an expertise in the vicarious calibration of solar reflectance imagers. With a doctorate in atmospheric sciences, he was part of the original EOS calibration/validation (cal/ val) effort serving as a member of the science team for both the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER). He has worked closely with the instrument teams for those sensors as well as the instrument teams for Landsat, the Multiangle Imaging Spectroradiometer (MISR) on Terra, and several NASA airborne facility imagers (e.g., MODIS Airborne Simulator, MODIS/ASTER Airborne Simulator). Thome’s NASA instrument science team experience also includes Earth Observing-1, Landsat-7, and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP). He also serves as the Instrument Scientist for the Visible/Infrared Imager–Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on Suomi NPP, calibration lead for the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) on the Landsat Data Continuity Mission, and the Deputy Project Scientist for the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) mission. With his broad science and instrument experience, Thome is an excellent fit to continue leading the successful multiinstrument and multi-disciplinary Terra mission. Please join me in welcoming Thome to his new position.