Emergent’s GEDI Team Receives NASA Silver Achievement Medal

The Emergent Space Technologies GEDI Team, as part of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Code 61A's GEDI mission, received the NASA Silver Achievement Medal “for delivering the decadal-class GEDI instrument, on budget, ahead of schedule, and producing the first high-resolution observations of the Earth’s three-dimensional forest structure.”

The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) produces high resolution laser ranging observations of the 3D structure of the Earth. GEDI’s precise measurements of forest canopy height, canopy vertical structure, and surface elevation greatly advance our ability to characterize important carbon and water cycling processes, biodiversity, and habitat. GEDI will provide answers to how deforestation has contributed to atmosphere CO2 concentrations, how much carbon forests will absorb in the future, and how habitat degradation will affect global biodiversity.
Emergent’s GEDI Team Receives NASA Silver Achievement Medal

Emergent’s team led the development of the Science Planning System, which is responsible for mission planning. This effort included development of precise attitude determination, pointing and monitoring software to meet GEDI's geolocation budget, as well as operational code and precision calibration algorithms for time tagging GEDI laser pulse. Additionally, they performed pre-launch GEDI GPS receiver simulation testing and performance analyses and created analysis tools to track GEDI data deliveries to help streamline the data re-delivery process and allow for less latency on data processing. They also assisted in the setup, implementation, and maintenance of the Science Data Management System that sends and receives data products across numerous platforms. Jaime Kline, Emergent’s Director of Technical Services commented, “We are proud to support NASA Goddard’s Sciences and Exploration Directorate and the GEDI mission and we are thrilled that our customer values our team’s contributions. This award highlights the quality of our engineers and their work”.