In 1957 , Pecora was selected as Chief of the Branch of Geochemistry and Petrology within the United States Geological Survey . He established programs in geochronology , experimental petrology , and mineralogy . In 1961 , he returned to research . He was named Chief Geologist in 1964 and a year later was appointed Director of the United States Geological Survey by President Lyndon B. Johnson . As Director , he pressed for programs that would be responsive to emerging national problems , such as investigations of gold resources and off-shore oil and gas exploration . He established the National Center of Earthquake Research in response to problems revealed by the 1964 Alaska earthquake . As Director , he advocated for the creation of a remote sensing satellite that would be used to gather information about the surface of the Earth , which became the Landsat program , the longest-running project for gathering images of Earth from space . Pecora was director of the USGS when the Astrogeology Research Program began in 1963
1964 Alaska earthquake
1964 Alaska earthquake
William Thomas Pecora