Douglas Isbell

Headquarters, Washington, DC July 1, 1996

(Phone: 202/358-1753)

RELEASE: 96-125

NASA NAMES LANDSAT 7 SCIENCE TEAM AND

FUNDS PROMISING YOUNG EARTH SCIENTISTS

NASA has selected the team leader and other members of

the science team for the future Landsat 7 remote-sensing
satellite and awarded grants to promising Earth scientists in
the early stages of their research careers.

Solicited in a September 1995 NASA Research

Announcement, the recent selections also include
interdisciplinary Earth scientists and additional researchers
to work with data returned by instruments to be flown on the
Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and Earth Observing
System spacecraft. The total value of the awards to 198
scientists from 60 institutions is approximately $15 million.

All of the scientists will be working in support of

NASA's Mission to Planet Earth program, a long-term
comprehensive research effort to better understand the Earth
as an integrated system of land, water, air and life.

The Landsat 7 science team will be led by Dr. Samuel

Goward of the University of Maryland in College Park. Other
team members are based at universities in Arizona, Colorado,
Florida, Hawaii, and New York; the U.S. Geological Survey and
Department of Agriculture; and NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD, and the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA.

Landsat 7 is scheduled for launch in December 1998,

with a main objective of continuing the record of remote-
sensing measurements of Earth's land surfaces made by the
Landsat series of satellites since 1972. A small technology
demonstration satellite developed under NASA's New Millennium
program will fly in formation with Landsat 7 to evaluate an
advanced hyperspectral imaging instrument that could extend
the Landsat-type data set beyond the Landsat series.
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Mission To Planet Earth's "New Investigator Program"

(NIP) is designed to provide financial support to scientists
and engineers at an early stage of their professional career.
NIP proposals were restricted to recent Ph.D. recipients
graduating no more than five years before the issue date of
the announcement. The proposed investigations had to be
based on analysis, interpretation, and significant use of
data from space-based observations leading to an improved
understanding of the Earth system and global climate change.
A long-term cost-sharing commitment by the associated
university was a secondary requirement for selection.

Twenty-one of 67 submitted proposals were selected, with

the researchers based at 18 universities, the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution near Boston, GSFC and JPL.

"NASA selected this group of outstanding young

scientists to foster interdisciplinary Earth system science
and education in support of its missions in the 21st
century," said Dr. Ghassem Asrar, Lead Program Scientist in
the Office of Mission to Planet Earth, NASA Headquarters,
Washington, DC.

A complete list of the researchers selected and the

topics of their proposals is available on the World Wide Web
at the following URL:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/mtpe/eosresul.html

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