Coming up in the August SYSTEMS

Coming up in the August 2014 issue, the 2013 IEEE AESS Pioneer Awardees, Kam Y. Lau, from the University of California at Berkley, and George F. Lutes, from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tell the story of the events leading up to the effort for which they received the award. They received the Pioneer Award for ??Ultra-Stable RF-Over-Fiber Transport Enables NASA Ground-Based Deep Space Tracking Antenna Arrays and Space-Borne Earth Mapping Radar.?? The story begins in the Mohave Desert North of Los Angeles in Southern California in a small valley near the ghost town of Goldstone northwest of Barstow, where ??big steerable parabolic dish antennas rise from the desert floor?? and workers deal with vinegaroons and rattle snakes in a landscape of sagebrush and Joshua Trees. Stay tuned for the rest of their tale in August.