Ed Prior

Ed Prior (Grad ’72) retired from NASA Langley in 2005 after a 40-year career there. 36 years after he first published research showing high altitude hydrogen levels to be three times greater than cited in national standards, the U.S. Air Force accepted his results in 2008 for their new atmospheric model. The results will also be incorporated into the 2009 COSPAR International Reference Atmosphere. Mr. Prior was the NASA principal investigator for PAGEOS, the second largest satellite by volume to be injected into earth orbit. His U.Va. thesis was on orbital drag measurements at altitudes above 2000 kilometers, from observations of the balloon satellite’s orbital decay. Eventually published by Byrd Press in 1972 in The Use of Artificial Satellites for Geodesy, the thesis found hydrogen levels to be 200 percent greater than given in the U.S. Standard Atmosphere. Mr. Prior’s research has been variously cited in The Stratosphere: Past and Present, the COSPAR International Reference Atmosphere, the U.S. National Report on Geodesy and the various U.S. Standard Atmosphere publications. There are a total of six references to his research in three different annual editions of Significant Achievements in Space Science.