Message-Id: <5.1.1.6.0.20021126140508.01f87060@ltpmailx.gsfc.nasa.gov> Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 11:00:14 -0500 To: slrmail@dgfi.badw-muenchen.de (EDC), igsmail@igscb.jpl.nasa.gov, ivsmail@gsfc.nasa.gov From: John Degnan Subject: [IGSMAIL-4177]: My Retirement from NASA Sender: owner-igsmail Precedence: bulk ****************************************************************************** IGS Electronic Mail 02 Dec 10:49:20 PST 2002 Message Number 4177 ****************************************************************************** Author: John Degnan To my friends and colleagues in the space geodetic community: I am writing to inform you that I will retire from NASA on January 3, 2003. I filed the official paperwork yesterday. I first came to the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) as a college freshman and student trainee in 1964 and had the great pleasure of being a junior member of the team that recorded the first laser echoes from an artificial satellite using the original Goddard Laser (GODLAS) system. I have been involved with the development of advanced Satellite Laser Ranging systems ever since beginning with the Goddard Standard Laser (STALAS) in 1975, the MOBLAS and TLRS upgrades to cm quality in the 1980's, the move to increased automation in the early 1990's, and most recently the totally automated photon-counting SLR2000 system which has begun field trials. I came to know many of you in the international space geodetic community when I took the position of Deputy Manager and Chief Engineer for NASA's Crustal Dynamics Project under John Bosworth in 1989. I have been involved with the NASA SLR and VLBI networks since that time. In anticipation of my retirement, I resigned from my position as Chairperson of the ILRS Governing Board in early October at the 13th International Workshop for Laser Ranging in Washington DC. I am pleased to report that Dr. Werner Gurtner of the University of Berne in Switzerland was selected by the new ILRS Governing Board as it's chairperson. Werner has been an extremely active member of the ILRS GB since its inception in 1998 and is well known to the GPS community as well. I leave the ILRS chairmanship in excellent hands. One of the great pleasures of my professional career was to observe how the scientific community utilized the technological advances in the SLR hardware to make new and exciting measurements in the areas of gravity field, plate tectonics, Earth Orientation Parameters, oceanography, lunar physics, general relativity, etc. I wish to take this opportunity to commend and thank the space geodetic community for its resourcefulness and creativity in formulating and solving new scientific problems which in turn gave my own professional efforts relevance and meaning. I plan to stay in the Washington DC area and continue to work in the science and engineering arena but in a university or corporate environment. I am currently considering several employment options and have not yet made a final decision. However, I do hope to continue my association with the Laboratory for Terrestrial Physics and its programs in some capacity. I see exciting times ahead for geodesy. The SLR2000 technology has recently been applied successfully to an airborne photon counting imaging lidar, and globally contiguous high resolution mapping of moons and planets by low power lasers now seems feasible. I also look forward to the day when compact laser transponders will measure interplanetary distances to centimeters and transfer time between the planets with subcentimeter accuracy. (see the Journal of Geodynamics, November 2002) I look forward to seeing some of you at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco next week and hopefully at future meetings. I wish you all continued success in your scientific and engineering endeavors. Sincerely, John Dr. John J. Degnan Head, Geoscience Technology Office Mail Code 920.3 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD 20771 USA Phone: 01-301-614-5860 FAX: 01-301-614-5970 E-mail: John.J.Degnan@nasa.gov Thought for the Day: A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in - Greek proverb