Turning a Great Idea Into Real Science and Applications

Mary Cleave, NASA
Viewing the Earth from space was a truly inspired idea. But like all great ideas, this one has taken a lot of work to realize its full potential. NASA, USGS, and others have worked hard since the days of ERTS-1 to ensure Earth observation could be fully exploited for science and applications. This has required a focus on calibration and validation, and on expanding the spatial, temporal, and spectral coverage in scientifically useful ways. And it has required the formation of a web of commercial, interagency, and international partnerships with both suppliers and users of Earth remote sensing data. We have demonstrated the vast utility and potential of the view from space. It remains for us to help remote sensing products become ubiquitous in the economy and in societal decision-making generally.

Mary L. Cleave, Ph.D.,P.E. is a former NASA astronaut. Cleve received a bachelor of science degree in Biological Sciences from Colorado State University in 1969 and a master's of science in Microbial Ecology and a doctorate in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Utah State University in 1975 and 1979, respectively.

Dr. Cleave held graduate research, research phycologist, and research engineer assignments in the Ecology Center and the Utah Water Research Laboratory at Utah State University from September 1971 to June 1980. Her work included research on the productivity of the algal component of cold desert soil crusts in the Great Basin Desert south of Snowville, Utah; algal removal with intermittent sand filtration and prediction of minimum river flow necessary to maintain certain game fish; the effects of increased salinity and oil shale leachates on freshwater phytoplankton productivity; development of the Surface Impoundment Assessment document and computer program (FORTRAN) for current and future processing of data from surface impoundments in Utah; and design and implementation of an algal bioassay center and a workshop for bioassay techniques for the Intermountain West. In conjunction with her research efforts, she has published numerous scientific papers.

Dr. Cleave was selected as an astronaut in May 1980. Her technical assignments have included: flight software verification in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL); CAPCOM on five Space Shuttle flights; Malfunctions Procedures Book; Crew Equipment Design. A veteran of two space flights, Dr. Cleave has logged a total of 10 days, 22 hours, 02 minutes, 24 seconds in space, orbited the earth 172 times and traveled 3.94 million miles. She was a mission specialist on STS 61-B (November 26 to December 3, 1985) and STS-30 (May 4-8, 1989). Dr. Cleave left JSC in May 1991 to join NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. She is working in the Laboratory for Hydrospheric Processes. She is the deputy project manager for SeaWiFS (Sea-viewing, Wide-Field-of-view-Sensor), an ocean color sensor for monitoring global marine chlorophyll concentration.

Dr. Cleave is a member of the Texas Society of Professional Engineers, the Water Pollution Control Federation, Tri-Beta, Sigma XI, and Tau Beta Pi. She is also a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.