AFRL scientist receives Air Force Award

  • Published
  • By Connie Rankin
  • 377th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
Kirtland Air Force Base, NM --  Dr. Thomas Cooley, who served as Air Force Research Laboratory's program manager for both the Tactical Satellite-3 program and the Imaging Spectroscopy technical program is an Air Force selectee for the Arthur S. Flemming Award and will now compete at the national level.

The Flemming award annually recognizes outstanding federal employees who have made significant and extraordinary contributions to the federal government. Final winners of the award will be chosen by a panel of distinguished, nationally prominent judges. The awards will be presented at the 62nd Annual Arthur S. Flemming Awards Program in Washington, D.C., in June.

Dr. Steve Lipson of AFRL at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., Dr. Cooley's former supervisor, nominated him for the Flemming Award.

"Dr. Cooley is a bold leader for TacSat-3 in particular and Imaging Spectroscopy in general," said Dr. Lipson. "Dr. Cooley is now the technical advisor for Electro Optical Space Sensing, in a capacity in which he serves both the Sensors and Space Vehicle Directorates. We are both extremely proud of the contributions still being made today by TacSat-3 as an operational Air Force satellite as well as by the entire team that developed and launched TacSat-3."

Among Dr. Cooley's significant accomplishments was the development of a $100 million satellite, the TacSat-3, from its inception as a rapid-build, highly capable, low-cost space demonstration. TacSat-3 was the first satellite developed end-to-end using this method. It was launched on May 19, 2009, and has been a success in multiple ways.

Because of the success of the TacSat-3 demonstration, the Air Force has recently transitioned the satellite to operational use.

Ground forces can task the satellite, process the hyperspectral imagery on board, and downlink the information back to the user within 10 minutes. Previously, that use would have taken two days.

Dr. Cooley is recognized as a world leader in imaging spectroscopy technology and manages the $5 million a year program. The 20-member team of scientists develops concepts for future space-based hyperspectral imagers. In addition, the team has been lauded for its contributions in providing imagery data from TacSat-3 on the Chile and Haiti earthquakes as well as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Dr. Cooley leads a 10-agency alliance and international coalition partnership with Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, which committed more than $10 million of cooperative research and development funds.

Dr. Cooley's insights have led to numerous important technology developments saving millions of dollars over traditional methods. He guided AFRL's research and development effort in the field of atmospheric optical transmission modeling and imagery compensation. This technology is essential to space-based spectral imaging and to obtaining surface characteristics of ground sites from space.

In addition to leading the development of TacSat-3, Dr. Cooley provided insights for other military and civilian payloads, including a $200 million successor to the TacSat-3, currently being developed. He also transferred lessons learned from the TacSat-3, reduced the on-orbit check-out time by two months, and corrected the pointing information by 100 meters for the follow-on payload.
Dr. Cooley is an internationally sought-after subject-matter expert on space-based remote sensing. As a member of the International Spaceborne Imaging Spectroscopy Working Group, he coordinates with major international stakeholders in this arena. He is an ambassador for AFRL, serving as a conference organizer, session chair and presenter at numerous international conferences, and co-authored multiple papers.

Dr. Cooley is at the forefront of imaginative concepts for air- and space-based optical sensors. He served as Warfighter-1 Hyperspectral Space Demonstration Principal Investigator, pioneering both the technology for hyperspectral sensing in space as well as a government-industry partnership for payload development.

He led the development of a highly capable in-house calibration facility at AFRL that provides calibration improvements for Air Force spectral sensor systems currently under development. That facility provided calibration improvements for the Civil Air Patrol Airborne Real-time Cueing Hyperspectral Enhanced Reconnaissance sensor used in life-saving search-and-rescue operations.