Dr. Jim Irons and his wife, Karen, at the Landsat 8 launch in 2013.
Dr. Jim Irons, RRHS class of 1972, has been awarded NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal for his work on NASA’s Landsat program and Landsat 8 mission.
NASA describes the medal as awarded to those who “have made a profound or indelible impact on NASA mission success and therefore, the contribution is so extraordinary that other forms of recognition by NASA would be inadequate.”
Dr. Irons explains the Landsat program as having begun in 1972 “with the launch of a satellite ultimately called Landsat 1. It is the first civilian satellite that was designed and devoted to collecting observations of global land surfaces.”
These observations have been repeated over the past forty-two years with launching of subsequent Landsat missions and have grown to an archive of over five million images, which are maintained by the US Geological Society. (The images can be viewed and downloaded by the public for free at landsat.usgs.gov.) The purpose of collecting these digital files is to see how the global land surface has changed, a phenomenon that has increased dramatically over the past ten years due to population growth and technological advances, Dr. Irons says.
Dr. Irons was the NASA Landsat 8 Project Scientist, a role he describes as “working hand in hand with the Project Manager to ensure the project meets the full scientific mission for which it’s intended.” In this case, a large part of that had to do with calibrating the sensors and equipment involved, so that any changes in images were certain to be actual changes, not differences in various satellites’ performance.
Dr. Irons credits his success to a couple of factors, including the four decades’ worth of “skilled, hardworking people” who have been involved in the Landsat program. He also credits the science and math education he received at Rocky River High School during the late 60s and early 70s.
“I got a tremendous education at Rocky River,” the distinguished scientist says. “My classmates and I were fortunate enough to have a math teacher named Mr. Poley three of the four years we were there. There’s no question in my mind he’s the best teacher I’ve had ever, at any level.”
Additionally, Dr. Irons credits “a terrific science teacher named Mr. Bader,” who also contributed to Dr. Irons’ “solid foundation in science and math that has served me throughout my higher education and throughout my career.”
Just as Mr. Poley and Mr. Bader inspired Jim Irons, it’s a safe bet that Dr. Irons himself, and his honoring by NASA with their Distinguished Service Medal, will inspire Rocky River High School students of today.