40 Fun Facts About Valerie Thomas

Before joining NASA in 1964, Valerie Thomas had seen which machine only in science fiction movies?

A computer was just a movie prop to Thomas until NASA hired her to write programs. She then set out to learn everything she could about the machines.

Which object appeared to keep glowing with its power removed at a 1976 exhibit that inspired Valerie Thomas?

A light bulb seemed to shine even though it had been unscrewed from its socket. The trick relied on a second, hidden one and a curved mirror, and it set Thomas experimenting.

Which crop did LACIE, the satellite experiment Valerie Thomas led at NASA in 1974, aim to forecast worldwide?

Wheat harvests were the target: LACIE showed that Landsat images could predict yields around the globe. Thomas headed a team of about 50 people on the project.

SPAN, the NASA science network Valerie Thomas managed from 1986 to 1990, grew into part of which global system?

The Internet counts SPAN among its ancestors. Under Thomas the network grew from about 100 linked machines to roughly 2,700 around the world.

Which hip-hop artist tweeted about Valerie Thomas to millions of followers during Black History Month in 2021?

Chance the Rapper shared her name, photo and achievements with his millions of followers, introducing the NASA inventor to a younger generation.

Which celebrated 1986 visitor to Earth's skies was studied over Valerie Thomas's SPAN network?

Halley's Comet returns only about every 76 years, so researchers made the most of 1986 by sharing findings over SPAN, which Thomas ran as project manager.

Valerie Thomas was one of only two women in her college class to major in which science?

Physics was a rare choice for women in the early 1960s, yet Thomas excelled at it. NASA hired her as soon as she graduated in 1964.

Around age eight, Valerie Thomas borrowed a library book written for boys about which technical subject?

Electronics fascinated her, but her father never helped with the projects in The Boy's First Book on Electronics. It sat untouched until it was due back.

After retiring from NASA in 1995, Valerie Thomas took up which job in Maryland schools?

Substitute teacher is an unusual second act for a NASA manager, but Thomas has spent decades steering young people, especially young women, toward science.

Valerie Thomas was born in 1943 in which port, the largest city in the state of Maryland?

Baltimore was still segregated when Thomas grew up there, and her high school had only recently been integrated when she arrived.

Which historically Black university in Maryland did Valerie Thomas graduate from in 1964?

Morgan State University was still called Morgan State College in her day. Thomas shone at maths there after nobody at her high school had pushed her toward advanced classes.

Which early programming language did Valerie Thomas teach herself in order to check the quality of Landsat data?

Fortran let her write a small checking program far faster than before. It became an official quality-control tool that colleagues called the ValDump.

Which kind of mirror sits at both the sending and receiving ends of Valerie Thomas's illusion transmitter?

Concave mirrors can form an image that seems to hang in front of the glass, unlike flat ones, whose reflections appear to sit behind it.

At which NASA centre in Maryland did Valerie Thomas work from 1964 until retiring in 1995?

Goddard Space Flight Center was her base for 31 years, apart from one spent at NASA Headquarters. She also mentored the students who worked there each summer.

Fresh from college in 1964, Valerie Thomas was hired by NASA for which job?

Data analyst was her first title, and it meant writing programs that turned raw satellite signals into something a scientist could read.

Landsat, the NASA programme Valerie Thomas joined in 1970, was originally known by which name?

Earth Resources Technology Satellite, or ERTS, was the name on the first craft at its 1972 launch. The friendlier Landsat arrived in 1975.

Landsat, which Valerie Thomas worked on for over a decade, is run jointly by NASA and which other US agency?

The U.S. Geological Survey's director proposed an Earth-watching satellite back in 1965, a year after Thomas joined NASA.

What kind of high school did Valerie Thomas attend, where nobody steered her toward advanced maths classes?

An all-girls school, Western High, had only just been integrated when she enrolled. It is the oldest public high school for girls still open in the United States.

What kind of images was Valerie Thomas's illusion transmitter, patented in 1980, built to send?

Three-dimensional pictures that seem to float in space were the goal, made with ordinary light instead of the lasers such effects usually needed.

Valerie Thomas's SPAN network aided study of which atmospheric threat, first reported over Antarctica in 1985?

The ozone hole was revealed by British Antarctic Survey scientists a year before Thomas became SPAN's project manager, and the network carried the research that followed.

In Valerie Thomas's early years at NASA, on which storage medium did programmers typically enter their code?

Punch cards were typed up on a keypunch machine, Thomas recalled, and nobody had a terminal at their desk: the mainframe sat in another building.

Which invisible band of light do the Landsat satellites Valerie Thomas worked on use to gauge crop health?

Infrared sensors see what eyes cannot, and the false-colour Landsat pictures built from them give farmers strong clues about how their fields are faring.

Valerie Thomas's LACIE project followed the 1972 'Great Grain Robbery', when which country bought up American grain?

The Soviet Union bought about 18 million tonnes of American grain after its own harvest failed, and food prices jumped. LACIE grew out of the wish to see such failures coming.

From which institution in the US capital did Valerie Thomas earn a master's in engineering administration in 1985?

George Washington University awarded the degree in the same year that NASA put Thomas in charge of the hardware at its space science data centre.

In which field did Valerie Thomas earn a doctorate in 2004, nine years after retiring from NASA?

Educational leadership suited her second career: the degree followed decades of mentoring students and speaking in schools.

Which NASA honour did Valerie Thomas, a tireless mentor of minority and female students, receive?

The Equal Opportunity Medal recognised a career in which Thomas made hundreds of visits to schools and national meetings as a role model for young scientists.

Valerie Thomas's floating pictures are often likened to which images, also used as security marks on credit cards?

Holograms are normally recorded with laser light, but her invention produced a similar floating effect using mirrors and a video link.

In which Alabama city, home to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, did Valerie Thomas defend her LACIE work?

Huntsville hosted the readiness review, where Thomas arrived with a 15-minute talk and instead faced 45 minutes of grilling before a packed auditorium.

Which distinction does Landsat, the Earth-imaging satellite programme Valerie Thomas helped start, hold?

The longest-running programme of its kind, Landsat has imaged the planet since 1972, two years after Thomas joined the team preparing it.

LACIE, the NASA project Valerie Thomas led in the 1970s, stands for Large Area Crop what Experiment?

Inventory was the point: LACIE set out to tally crops from orbit, with a system designed to process 100 test sites a day.

In Valerie Thomas's illusion transmitter, which device captures the image formed by the first mirror?

A camera films the image hanging before the first mirror, then sends video signals to a projector aimed at a second mirror far away.

In a much-shared 1979 NASA photograph, Valerie Thomas stands beside a tall stack of which Landsat storage items?

Digital tapes held every early Landsat image, and Thomas knew their format so well that scientists around the world were referred to her with questions.

Besides tinkering with radios, which other hobby did Valerie Thomas's father pursue during her childhood?

Photography and gadgets filled her father's spare time, yet he never showed his daughter how any of it worked, which left her all the more curious.

What was Valerie Thomas's place in her family as she grew up curious about her father's gadgets?

An only child, Thomas felt her father was telling her to stick to sewing and hairdressing like her mother and to leave the circuits to him.

Which branch of maths did professor Julius Henry Taylor reportedly teach Valerie Thomas in about 20 minutes?

Trigonometry in 20 minutes says a lot about professor and student alike: Taylor chaired her department, and nobody at school had urged Thomas toward advanced maths.

Which rank had Valerie Thomas reached at NASA's Space Science Data Operations Office when she retired in 1995?

Associate chief was her final title, held alongside two other jobs: managing NASA's automated systems incident response team and chairing an education committee.

Before Landsat, Valerie Thomas wrote quick-look satellite programs in which slow, painstaking kind of code?

Assembly language took so long to write that Thomas later taught herself a quicker alternative. Her early programs unpacked raw readings so a scientist could check his experiment.

Valerie Thomas's first NASA programs decoded readings from which series of 1960s science satellites?

Orbiting Geophysical Observatory craft could send readings only while in range of an antenna, so her programs had to sort each burst for the waiting scientist.

Valerie Thomas's SPAN network aided research on which kind of cosmic event, famously spotted in 1987?

A supernova was among the headline discoveries shared over SPAN, the science network Thomas built up as project manager between 1986 and 1990.

Which institution awarded Valerie Thomas a doctorate in 2004, four decades after her first degree?

The University of Delaware became her third alma mater: she studied there under Fred T. Hofstetter long after retiring from NASA.