Dr. Josef Kellndorfer heartily remembers receiving computer hard drives in the mail containing the data he needed for his research in the 1990s.
Those hard drives came from NASA's Alaska Satellite Facility Distributed Active Archive Center (ASF DAAC), traveling the roughly 4,400 miles to Massachusetts, where he worked at the Woods Hole Research Center, now known as the Woodwell Climate Research Center. Today he is a distinguished visiting scientist at the center but maintaining a strong connection to the satellite facility.
Things have changed mightily since those hard-drive days. He now gets the data he needs from ASF DAAC by tapping on his computer keyboard.
He has been an integral player over his years of official and unofficial connection to ASF DAAC, which is funded by NASA and part of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute. And it has shown in the sharp increase in the number of researchers acquiring the data. They tap in from around the globe.
Josef is among the people who they can thank for that.