John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences

News and information from the UND John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences.

Space Studies Colloquium Series Begins on January 27th

The Space Studies Spring 2020 Colloquium Series will feature several leading experts in various space-related fields.  Please join us for our first presentation in this series that will feature two systems engineers from the USGS Earth Resources Observations and Science (EROS) Center, Jon Christopherson and Shankar Nag Ramaseri Chandra. Both are also alums of the Space Studies M.S. program.

Presentation Title:  Remote Sensing from Space: A Time of Extreme Growth

Date:  Monday, January 27, 2020

Time:  5:00-7:00 p.m. (Central Time)

Location:  Ryan Hall, Room 134  (note room change for this event)

About the topic: Observation of Earth’s land areas from space began with the launch of the first Landsat in 1972.  In recent years there has been almost explosive growth in Earth Observation (EO) from space as hundreds of satellites have been launched in the last several years.  The presenters, both from the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center in Sioux Falls will introduce the colloquium to EROS and what it does and also discuss the recent rapid growth in remote sensing from space and its implications and opportunities.

About the speakers:

Jon Christopherson is a Principal Systems Engineer with KBR, the technical services contractor to the USGS EROS Center.  At EROS he is a lead in the New Missions area where they work to stay abreast of the many new Earth observing satellites being launched, their data quality, and usefulness to Science.

Prior to EROS, Christopherson worked for an Aerospace & Defense company building the sensor for Landsat 7 in Santa Barbara.  His career has taken him to 24 countries and all fifty states while he has lived in Southern California, Silicon Valley, Georgia, Germany, Saudi Arabia and now South Dakota.

Christopherson has a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering and was in the first UND Space Studies class to get their Master’s degrees via Distance Learning in 1998.

Shankar Ramaseri holds a master’s degree in Space Studies from UND. He currently works as a Systems Engineer for KBR, a technical contractor to USGS EROS Center. His work at EROS is focused on researching remote sensing systems and assist with system characterization. He also works on orbit analyses of remote sensing satellites. Shankar holds a bachelors in Aeronautical Engineering from JNTU, India. While in India, he worked as a project engineer for Defense Research Development Organization (DRDO) researching orbits and sensors. Shankar’s interests lie in studying orbital dynamics of satellites around asteroids, remote sensing and space policy.

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A simple live webcast will be available here.

Via Zoom video conferencing.  Questions for the speaker may be posted at this site during the presentation and is best suited for enrolled students.

Colloquium presentations will be added to the space.edu colloquium website after the live event for later public viewing.