The longtime Topanga home of late aerospace trailblazer Virginia T. Norwood recently surfaced on the market for $2.25 million.
Surrounded by oak trees, this 2,784-square-foot main house — completed in 1963 and later updated — has three bedrooms, three bathrooms and an open-plan living space. In 2006, Norwood added a separate one-bedroom, 800-square-foot guest house on the 1.68-acre lot.
Records show the aerospace engineer, inventor and physicist best known for her contribution to the Landsat program bought the property in September 1978 for $175,000.
Norwood, who died in March 2023 at 96, was the only woman among roughly 2,700 men in Hughes Aircraft Co.’s research and development labs, according to the MIT Technology Review. She developed the groundbreaking Multispectral Scanner for mapping Earth’s land surface from satellites in orbit as part of NASA and United States Geological Survey’s joint Landsat program. The invention earned Norwood the moniker “the mother of Landsat.”
Since 1972, those continuous images have created a resource for tracking climate change, deforestation, urbanization, drought, wildfire and other natural and human-caused factors, according to the USGS.
Norwood’s daughter, Naomi, recalled by email how her mother fell in love with Topanga’s secluded Old Canyon neighborhood, where she enjoyed her daily runs on nearby Red Rock Road. As time went on, these runs became long daily walks and eventually occasional strolls, which she kept up well into her 90s.
The natural area suited her love of birdwatching. Each morning, rain or shine, started with filling the many bird feeders, turning on the fountain and sipping coffee on the covered portion of the brick patio, with binoculars in hand.
She also kept binoculars in two corners of the living room near large mitered windows to check out the occasional raptor in the oaks.
The house has many features Norwood personally added, mostly on weekends while working full-time at Hughes Aircraft Co.
She cut holes in the ceiling and installed four of the five skylights. She laid the oak flooring in the kitchen, dining and family rooms, and also installed tile and glass blocks in the bathrooms. Working alongside her late second husband, Maurice Schaeffer, she built a significant portion of the kitchen using workbenches that are still in the carport.
The grounds include sunny flat spaces suitable for gardens, a former horse corral site and an additional undeveloped hilltop area with cross canyon views, the listing reads.
“It is a lovely home that reflects its longtime owner perfectly: solid, warm, unpretentious, full of light and connected to nature,” said the listing agent Jay Kilgore of Snyder Sutton Real Estate in an email.
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