Apollo Legacy

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Landsat and Apollo: The Forgotten Legacy Paul D. Lowman, Jr. Abstract This paper demonstrates that Landsat was fundamentally a result of the Apollo Program. The U.S. Geological Survey's EROS proposal of 1966, which eventually led to Landsat, was stimulated largely by the demonstrated utility of 1100 orbital photographs from the Gemini missions, Gemini being solely preparation for Apollo. In addition, Earth-oriented remote sensing research sponsored by NASA in the mid-1960s, primarily support for Apollo lunar missions, included studies of Earth resource applications as well. Finally, the extensive series of airborne remote sensing studies carried out by the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center was Apollo-derived in that the primary mission of…show more content…
Future space efforts may be handicapped by this still-widespread view, typified by the recent statement of French space minister Claude Allegre, criticizing the International Space Station, that he was unaware of any important scientific discovery made by an astronaut (Space News, 22-28 June 1998). The case for Apollo as a key element in Landsat begins with the statement by the late W. T. Pecora (1969), that Landsat's precursor concept, the Earth Resources Observation Satellite (EROS) program of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), was "conceived in 1966 largely as a direct result of the demonstrated utility of Mercury and Gemini orbital photography to Earth resource studies." A contemporary review of satellite imagery in this journal (Merifield et al., 1969) devoted its first six pages to the "superb" Gemini and Apollo 70-mm geologist (Fary, photographs. A similar paper, by a U ~ G S 1967) argued for EROS, illustrating its value with several ''magnificent" Gemini photographs. However, the link between EROS and Apollo is a complex one, needing further discussion. The American manned space program began with Project Mercury in 1958. On the last two Mercury missions (MAGoddard Space…show more content…
Cronin, L.L. Foshee, S.J. Gawarecki, J.T. Neal, R.E. Stevenson, R.O. Stone, and R.S. Williams, Jr., 1969. Satellite imagery of the Earth, Photogrammetric Engineering, 653654468. Newell, H.E., 1980.Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science, Special Publication 4211,National Aeronautics and Space Adminstration, 497 p. O'Keefe, J.A., L. Dunkelman, S.D. Soules, W.F. Huch, and P.D. Lowman, Jr., 1963. Observations of space phenomena, Mercury Project Summary, Including Results of the Fourth Manned Orbital Flight, Special Report 45,National Aeronautics and Space Adminstration, Washington, D.C., 445 p. Pecora, W.T., 1969. Earth resource observations from an orbiting spacecraft, Manned Laboratories in Space (S.F. Singer, editor), Springer-Verlag, New York, pp. 75-87. Vincent, R.K., 1997. Geological and Environmental Remote Sensing, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 366 p. (Received 12 August 1998;accepted 10 September 1998;revised 03 November 1998) PLAN TO ATTEND THESE UPCOMING A P S CONFERENCES: SR PECORA 14lLAND SATELLITE INFORMATION Ill "Demonstrating the Value of Satellite Imagery" December 6-10,1999 Doubletree Hotel Denver Denver,

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