2008 Annual Report - NASA Airborne Science Program

APPENDIX A
In Memoriam
Steven E. Gaines
January 16, 1949 - October 22, 2008
Steve Gaines, one of the original
members of the NASA Ames Earth
Science Project Office (ESPO), and
a major contributor to the airborne
science community, died this past
October after a brief battle with cancer. He
was 59.
Steve is best known for his tireless work
managing the data from the major NASA
airborne field campaigns. Steve, along with
Steve Hipskind, developed the data exchange
format standards that came to bear his name.
He was well known and had friends
around the world, largely through his
work on the field campaigns, and through
the adoption of his format standards by
other groups both nationally and internationally.
In the late 1980’s, with the
encouragement of Michael Prather, then
managing the Atmospheric Composition,
Modeling and Analysis Program at NASA
HQ, Steve became an early leader in
adopting CDROM for the dissemination
of the airborne datasets, before CDROM
technology was in common use. Steve
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