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Satnews Daily
January 26th, 2012

NASA... Name Change Honors Meteorologist (Satellite)



Verner E. Suomi, "father of satellite meteorology", photo courtesy of the University of Wisconsin.
[SatNews] NASA has renamed its newest Earth-observing satellite in honor of the late....

....Verner E. Suomi, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin who is recognized widely as "the father of satellite meteorology." The announcement was made January 24th at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society in New Orleans. NASA launched the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project, or NPP, on October 28, 2011, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. NPP was renamed Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership, or Suomi NPP. The satellite is the first designed to collect critical data to improve short-term weather forecasts and increase understanding of long-term climate change.

"Verner Suomi's many scientific and engineering contributions were fundamental to our current ability to learn about Earth's weather and climate from space," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington." Suomi NPP not only will extend more than four decades of NASA satellite observations of our planet, it also will usher in a new era of climate change discovery and weather forecasting."

The Suomi NPP mission is a bridge between NASA's Earth Observing System satellites to the next-generation Joint Polar Satellite System, or JPSS, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) program. JPSS is the civilian component of the former National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), which was "reorganized" by the Obama Administration in 2010.