Day - 25 - Valerie Thomas - She Helped Us See Earth from Space

Valerie Thomas

Another space scientist! It took me a while to be able to write this one because I didn't have enough science under my belt.

Valerie Thomas was born in 1943 in Maryland. She was a born scientist. She was fascinated by all things science. Unfortunately, she was born into a world where girls were not supposed to do science. I mean, we had other pursuits that fit us better.

She did not let the lack of support stop her. At the age of eight, she went off to the public library.

An aside - FUND PUBLIC LIBRARIES! For some kids, it is the only place they will find a window into a wider world!

Valerie checked out The Boy's First Book of Electronics. She loved it. Her father noticed her love of electronics, but he was just as uninterested in helping her out like everybody else. Nobody encouraged her to pursue her love of science!

Luckily this did not deter her. She found ways outside of school to indulge in her passion.

(Libraries. (cough, cough. Fund libraries!) Aren't you glad her local public librarian wasn't as close-minded as the rest of the people in her world?

She went to an all-girl high school! They were as uninterested in helping Valerie as everyone else in her life, and they did not offer much in the way of encouragement for her scientific heart.

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Despite this constant beat of telling her that science wasn't for girls or girls like her, anyway, she did what all determined women do. She ignored them.

When she got to Morgan State University, she threw caution to the wind and enrolled in the physics program. She was only one of two women studying physics. I can only assume that she was tickled to have found some other girl who put her fingers in her ears and said, "la, la, la!" when people were telling her that science was only for boys!

Well, anyone who has seen the movie Hidden Figures knows what happened next. She was hired to work at NASA. She was brought in as a computer.

The black women who were hired early in NASA's existence had to have all sorts of wicked math skills. Valerie Thomas most certainly did.

I could spend pages and pages trying to explain what and how she did what she did.

If you want to get into how in the 1970s she became the international expert and go-to source for pretty much everyone in the world for information on how to interpret and use Landsat technology - this is the system of satellites that takes pictures of the earth. She was also instrumental in developing the LACIE program - Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment. - Click here and read the fascinating interview she did about both of these things. The point of LACIE was to measure wheat yields across the globe.

And I'll bet you thought NASA was only concerned with outer space.

Before she retired in 1995, she had been -

- Project manager of the Space Physics Analysis Network
- Associate Chief of the Space Science Data office
- Manager of the NASA Automated System Incident Response Capability
- Chair of the Space Science Data Operations office Education Committee
- Helped to develop the computer designs that supported research on Halley's Comet, studying the Ozone Layer, satellite technology, the Voyager program, and studying a supernova.

What did she invent?

She invented the Illusion Transmitter...obviously.

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"What is that?" you ask.

1980 - Illusion Transmitter for transmitting 3D optical illusions developed

Valerie Thomas

The “Illusion Transmitter” is basically a device that would simulate a real-time, 3-dimensional viewing of an object through optical illusions with parabolic mirrors.

What did this do?

Well, it allows NASA to look at everything from outer space objects to a section of the globe as if that thing is right in front of them. They can look at it from all sides in great detail. It would be like getting a big slice of Mars as if you could reach out and touch it.

It sends images from space to earth.

NASA uses this technology to this day. It is also used in televisions and has been adapted for hospitals.

Post NASA, Valerie has been busy.

She earned:

The GSFC - Goddard Space Flight Center Medal of Merit
NASA Equal Opportunity Medal - For her work with getting women and minorities in the sciences

She works with:

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The National Technical Association - NTA
Science Mathematics Aerospace Research Institute
Shades of Blue - is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to mentoring, tutoring, counseling, and arranging internship and employment referrals for young people who desire to pursue Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers.like

I am happy to share Valerie Thomas with you.

She made it possible for us to speak to our satellites and see the picture they sent back to us!