Robert J. Parks

Over a 40-year tenure at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL/NASA), located in Pasadena, California, Parks’ impact was essential to helping the United States lead the world in space exploration.

During his service, he received considerable additional schooling in electronics and radar at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Army's Fort Monmouth.

While stationed in Austria, he met his future wife Hanne Richter, an interpreter and the daughter of a professor at the Vienna Conservatory of Music.

[3] After leaving the army, Parks spent six months at Hughes Aircraft before starting work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in April 1947.

In addition, he was project manager for the Surveyor lunar lander series, the first soft landing on the Moon, the precursor to the Apollo Manned Program in 1965 and 1966.

In 1978 and 1979, Parks managed the Voyager Project which sent spacecraft to Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus which now has left our Solar System and continues on to this day...

[1] He and his JPL colleague Jack N. James were presented with the Stuart Ballantine Medal (Engineering) from the Franklin Institute in 1967 for their: "Application of electromagnetic communication to the first successful reconnaissance of Mars by the Mariner IV".