Shortly after I joined RIT I was awarded a contract in 1981 from NASA to help with the calibration of the first Landsat instrument with an effective thermal sensor (Landsat 4 launched 1982) and to study the thermal bar in Lake Ontario. This involved taking surface temperature measurements and water samples from boats and flying our airborne thermal sensing system under Landsat. This work continued in support of the Landsat 5 instrument (launched 1984) until 1986. Landsat 6 was a commercial venture and suffered a launch failure. It was not until the late 1990s that Landsat returned to NASA and they got Landsat 7 launched (1999). I was awarded a position on the Landsat 7 science team and continued to work on subsequent Landsat science and calibration teams until I was fully retired in 2017. Our work would expand from thermal calibration to: developing Landsat surface temperature products, demonstrating that the newer Landsat Instruments could study water quality, and modeling before launch how new instrument characteristics (e.g. improved signal to noise) could improve image derived products for data users. This work convinced NASA to involve us in studies of what the next generation of Landsat instruments should look like. This involved simulating various potential sensors, “flying” them over simulated scenes (see the DIRSIG story) and analyzing the simulated data to evaluate potential improvements. I worked for many sponsors on many diverse programs over the years but I very much cherish the 35+ years of work on the Landsat program (despite the nearly 15 year hiatus in the middle).