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Published January 2022 | Published
Journal Article Open

Microwave Pioneers: Charles Elachi, "Dare Mighty Things"

Abstract

This is the fifth article in our continuing series of biographical pieces with a technical lean (two in vol. 1, issue 1, and one each in vol. 1 issue 2 and issue 3). The subject of this paper is noted microwave radar remote sensing pioneer and National Aeronautics and Space Administration Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA/JPL) Director, Dr. Charles Elachi. Without a doubt, Dr. Elachi almost single-handedly pioneered the field of active microwave remote sensing from space. His early work on aircraft imaging radar and the deployment of microwave synthetic aperture techniques for ocean and land surveying led to a series of groundbreaking Space Shuttle missions and opened up whole new fields of research for oceanographers, geologists, planetary scientists, geophysicists, and even archeologists. Elachi's scientific and engineering accomplishments quickly led him up a long ladder within the NASA/JPL community, eventually landing him in the Director's chair. The title of the article reflects his mantra for success, both personally and for the institutions he played such a large role in.

Additional Information

© 2022 IEEE. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Received 8 October 2021; accepted 15 November 2021. Date of publication 23 December 2021; date of current version 7 January 2022. The author would like to thank Nora Mainland, long time JPL assistant to Dr. Elachi, for help with background material and images used in the text. The author also thanks staff librarians at both JPL and Caltech for assistance with some of the more difficult to acquire references as well as at the Los Angeles Public Library for a copy of the US News and World Report article in reference [103].

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Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023