NASA DEVELOP National Program

DEVELOP is a training and development program sponsored by NASA's Earth Science Applied Sciences Program. Headquartered at Langley Research Center, DEVELOP has teams at twelve locations around the country, one in Nepal and one in Mexico. Participants work with advisers and mentors to learn about the application of NASA Earth Science and remote sensing during three 10-week terms each year.DEVELOP is based in the Earth Science Mission, which has the goal to "Develop a scientific understanding of Earth’s system and its response to natural or human-induced changes, and to improve prediction of climate, weather, and natural hazards." With a unique focus on community concerns, DEVELOP offers participants the chance to work with remote sensing to research real-world problems.History of DEVELOPIn 1998, two students participating in the Langley Aerospace Research Summer Scholars Program and one student participating in the Summer High School Apprenticeship Research Program at NASA Langley Research Center co-authored the white paper Practical Applications of Remote Sensing . At that time, the Digital Earth Initiative, a federal inter-agency project dedicated to creating a virtual representation of the Earth to further human understanding of the world, was piloting an effort to increase public access to federal information about the Earth and the environment. A proposal combining NASA’s Digital Earth Initiative and the students’ paper advocated the formation of a student program, and in 1999 DEVELOP was formed.