Rockets’ Dead Stare

William H. Pickering, one of NASA’s brightest stars from an era when accomplishments outpaced explanations, who answered the Russian’s Sputnik with the Explorer series, died last week at the age of 93. Given the go-ahead by Congress when a US Navy satellite program was foundering, Pickering’s group launched their first satellite in just 83 days. Under his stewardship, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory also sent the Ranger and Surveyor probes to the moon, returning pictures and digging into the soil to show that the Apollo spacecraft could safely land on the lunar surface. The research he pioneered laid the groundwork for nearly everything NASA has accomplished, up to the current Mars probes, which he witnessed at Mission Control.