Raymond L. Heacock (January 9, 1928 – December 20, 2016) was an American engineer who spent his career at

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) in La Cañada Flintridge, California, Crescenta Valley, United States. Founded in 1936 by Cali ...

where he worked on the

Ranger program The Ranger program was a series of uncrewed space missions by the United States in the 1960s whose objective was to obtain the first close-up images of the surface of the Moon. The Ranger spacecraft were designed to take images of the lunar su ...

in the 1960s and on the

Voyager program The Voyager program is an American scientific program that employs two interstellar probes, ''Voyager 1'' and ''Voyager 2''. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable planetary alignment to explore the two gas giants Jupiter ...

in the 1970s and 1980s. A

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

engineering graduate, he was the winner of the

James Watt International Medal The James Watt Medal is an award for excellence in engineering established in 1937, conferred by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in the United Kingdom. It is named after Scottish engineer James Watt (1736–1819) who developed the Watt stea ...

for 1979.

Education and work

Heacock joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1953, after receiving his Master of Science Degree in Engineering from the California Institute of Technology. Prior to joining the Voyager Project in 1972 as Spacecraft Systems Manager he had advanced through various positions of responsibility at the Laboratory. In October 1977, he was appointed Deputy Manager of the Voyager Project and became Manager in 1979. He was a member of the

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is a professional society for the field of aerospace engineering Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecra ...

and has served as Secretary, Treasurer, Vice-President and President of the Board of Directors of the Caltech Alumni Association. Heacock is a native of Santa Ana, California and lived in La Crescenta. Since the inception of the Voyager Project in 1972, Heacock was deeply involved in guiding and shaping the successful development and operation of the sophisticated craft. The scientific data from the flight experiments carried aboard them have yielded startling new information on Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. Heacock was a leader in the design, development and flight operations of these craft as well as of their scientific instruments complement. As Spacecraft System Manager, Deputy Project Manager, and Project Manager he contributed personally to the development of various advanced design features leading to the Project's outstanding success. NASA's two robot spacecraft, ''

Voyager 1 ''Voyager 1'' is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, as part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System and the interstellar medium, interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. It was launched 16 days afte ...

'' and ''

Voyager 2 ''Voyager 2'' is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, as a part of the Voyager program. It was launched on a trajectory towards the gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and enabled further encounters with the ice giants (Uranus and ...

'', were launched in the Summer of 1977 on their journeys to Jupiter of more than 625 million miles. ''Voyager 1'' reached Saturn in November 1981, and then left the Solar System. Nearly 10 years later ''Voyager 1'' turned around to point its cameras towards Earth and took the famous ''

Pale Blue Dot ''Pale Blue Dot'' is a photograph of Earth taken on February 14, 1990, by the ''Voyager 1'' space probe from an unprecedented distance of over kilometers ( miles, 40.5 AU), as part of that day's ''Family Portrait'' series of images of th ...

'' image. ''Voyager 2'' reached Saturn in August 1981, then went on to

Uranus Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It is a gaseous cyan-coloured ice giant. Most of the planet is made of water, ammonia, and methane in a Supercritical fluid, supercritical phase of matter, which astronomy calls "ice" or Volatile ( ...

in 1986, and

Neptune Neptune is the eighth and farthest known planet from the Sun. It is the List of Solar System objects by size, fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 t ...

in 1989. The spacecraft reached interstellar space, becoming the first probes to do so.

James Watt International Medal

The presentation of the 1979 James Watt International Medal was made on Wednesday, June 25, 1980 at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in London. The Medal was presented to Heacock by the President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Bryan Hildrew. The James Watt International Medal is awarded biennially to an engineer of any nationality who is deemed worthy of this, the highest award which the Institution of Mechanical Engineers can bestow. The Council awarded the 1979 Medal to Heacock for his outstanding achievements as leader of the team responsible for shaping the development and execution of the technically advanced spacecraft used by the United States of America in the exploration of the outer planets of the

Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Sola ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Heacock, Raymond 1928 births 2016 deaths American aerospace engineers California Institute of Technology alumni Voyager program People from Santa Ana, California