Dr. Abshire presently serves as an Emeritus Senior Scientist in the Solar System Exploration Division. He previously served in a series of technical and scientific management positions at Goddard, including as Head of the Laser Remote Sensing Branch and Associate Chief for Laser Sensing in the Laboratory for Terrestrial Physics. He joined NASA Goddard in 1974.
During his career, he has played a key role in the development lasers and lidar (radar using lasers) for space. As part of this he was Instrument Scientist on the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter on NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor Mission and the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System on NASA’s ICESat Mission. He has served as Principal Investigator on a number of research projects that apply laser measurements and laser technology to scientific questions about the Earth and planets.
He is currently leading Goddard’s work in applying lasers to measure the Earth’s greenhouse gases from space. He previously was a member of formulation team for the NASA’s planned ASCENDS mission and is an external member of the science team the French/German MERLIN mission. Currently Dr. Abshire is leading studies to develop lidar for measurements of the Mars atmosphere.