Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771 

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM 

Monday, May 4, 1998 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium 

Mary L. Cleave

ABSTRACT -- Using photographic techniques and utilizing remote sensing spacecraft images, large scale environmental phenomena can be studied on a global scale. A slide presentation will be used to discuss some of these phenomena. Frequent problems interfering with spacecraft observations will also be addressed. Special emphasis will be placed on the accelerating rate of change of the surface of the planet Earth due to human activity and some of the potential impacts of that change on the future. 

SPEAKER: Mary Cleave graduated from Great Neck North High School, Great Neck, New York; received a bachelor of science degree in biological sciences from Colorado State University and a master of science in microbial ecology and a doctorate in civil and environmental engineering from Utah State University. Dr. Cleave has flown two Space Shuttle missions and has logged over 262 hours in space. As mission specialist on the crew of STS 61-B, aboard the Shuttle Atlantis she was the flight engineer and the primary Remote Manipulator System (RMS) operator. As mission specialist on the crew of STS-30, aboard the Orbiter Atlantis she deployed the Magellan Venus exploration spacecraft, the first U.S. planetary science mission since 1978, and the first planetary probe to be deployed from the Shuttle. After leaving JSC in May of 1991, she joined NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Maryland, to work in the Laboratory for Hydrospheric Processes. She is currently working on Earth observations at GSFC because of her concerns that human activity is changing the surface of the Earth too rapidly, based on the changes she observed in the four years between her two space flights. Dr. Cleave is the Project Manager for the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS), an ocean color sensor that is monitoring global marine chlorophyll concentrations.