NASA and NOAA Honor Suomi in Renaming the NPP Satellite

NASA and NOAA renamed their newest Earth-observing satellite after Verner Suomi, the longtime University of Wisconsin-Madison professor often called the father of satellite meteorology. The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP) satellite is now named Suomi NPP -- the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership.

Verner Suomi, with Explorer 7 and the Suomi NPP satellite and a “Blue Marble” image of the Earth, taken from the Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite instrument aboard NASA's most recently launched Earth-observing satellite, Suomi NPP. This composite image of Earth uses a number of swaths of the Earth's surface.
Image Credits: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring and UW Communications.

The announcement was made 24 January 2012 by John Mace Grunsfeld, former astronaut and current associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, at the NASA Town Hall Meeting at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in New Orleans.

Suomi, who died in 1995, spent nearly his entire career at UW-Madison. He may be best known for the spin-scan camera, which allowed satellites in stationary orbit of one point on Earth to maintain continuous focus and enable, among other capabilities, the instant-replay-style weather images that are used on television.

The NASA press release.

The NASA Suomi NPP site.

The UW-Madison press release.

 The honor is spotlighted on both the SSEC and CIMSS home pages.

Images captured by instrumentation on the Suomi NPP.

The Washington Post web site photo gallery.

The American Meteorological Society Blog.

And the CIMSS Satellite Blog.

The Verner E. Suomi Award Presented

The 2012 Verner E. Suomi Award was presented to Anne Thompson, professor of meteorology at Penn State, recognizing her extensive field work to understand ozone dynamics.

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