[meteorite-list] Former MESSENGER Mission Manager Robert Farquhar Dies at Age 83
From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2015 20:48:44 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <201511020448.tA24mijX000119_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov> http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=289 MESSENGER Mission News October 23, 2015 Former MESSENGER Mission Manager Robert Farquhar Dies at Age 83 Robert W. Farquhar, an early MESSENGER Mission Manager and a planetary trajectory pioneer who designed some of the most esoteric and complex spacecraft trajectories ever attempted, died on October 18, at the age of 83. A 50-year veteran of deep-space missions, Farquhar made pivotal contributions to the exploration of comets, asteroids, and the planets. "Bob Farquhar was critical to the MESSENGER mission, from initial concept through launch and early operations," offered MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "His competitive drive to achieve new firsts in space, his enthusiasm for attempting difficult tasks, and his brilliantly creative and technically thorough solutions to mission design challenges set a tone for the entire MESSENGER team. That MESSENGER was selected for flight, completed a record six planetary flybys, and became the first spacecraft to successfully orbit Mercury is in no small measure the result of Bob's inspiration, passion, and skill at problem solving. The entire MESSENGER team will miss him." Farquhar was born in 1932 and raised in Chicago. He showed an interest in aviation as a child, reading about the topic and designing and building model airplanes. After serving in the Army in Japan during the Korean War, he studied aeronautical engineering at the University of Illinois and received his bachelor's degree with honors in 1959. He went on to earn a master's degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1961. He worked briefly at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in Sunnyvale, California, after which he completed a Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1969. >From 1969 to 1990, Farquhar worked at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. In 1988, as Chief of Advanced Programs with the Space Physics Division, and Program Manager for the Discovery Program with the Solar System Exploration Division, he became involved in planning spacecraft missions to Mercury and Pluto. "I was intrigued with the possibility of developing low or moderate-cost mission and spacecraft designs that could lead to realizable flight missions with many 'firsts,'" he wrote in his memoir, Fifty Years on the Space Frontier: Halo Orbits, Comets, Asteroids, and More. Farquhar commissioned a study from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of a Mercury orbiter mission. JPL proposed a two-spacecraft Mercury Dual Orbiter (MDO) mission that would be launched on a single launch vehicle. Although the MDO mission was never selected for flight, several aspects of its mission design and operations concepts were adopted by the MESSENGER mission. MESSENGER was selected by NASA as the seventh Discovery mission in 1999, and Farquhar -- by that time at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland -- was appointed Mission Manager during the mission's development phase. In that role, he supervised the mission design and navigation tasks, and he coordinated many activities of the science, engineering, and mission operations teams. He also worked closely with Deep Space Network (DSN) representatives at JPL to ensure that MESSENGER would have adequate DSN coverage following launch. As Mission Manager, Farquhar was heavily involved in MESSENGER's pre-launch mission design, said his long-time collaborator David Dunham. "He made a notable decision late in the spacecraft design process when he found out that the spacecraft could not deliver a delta-V in all directions. Bob insisted on correcting that deficiency by adding two small thrusters, later informally called the 'Farquhar thrusters,' pointing toward the Sun through holes cut in the sunshade." Farquhar retired from APL in 2007 and stepped down from his position as Mission Manager. In a new position he accepted at KinetX, Inc., he remained involved with the mission, serving as an advisor for MESSENGER's navigation team. In his memoir, he wrote that his most important contribution to the MESSENGER mission was initiating the MDO study. It "changed the mind-set of NASA and the scientific community where a majority of people believed that a Mercury orbiter mission could only be done by employing solar-electric propulsion," he wrote. "This study set the stage for the acceptance of a low-cost ballistic mission to orbit Mercury." In addition to MESSENGER, Farquhar made fundamental contributions to several other space missions, including the Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR). He served as the first Mission Manager for NASA's New Horizons mission. Following a trajectory that Farquhar envisioned, that spacecraft flew past dwarf planet Pluto and its family of small moons this past July. He also conceived, and was the flight director for, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission to asteroid 433 Eros -- the first launch of the Discovery program and the first planetary exploration mission led by APL. "Bob was like no other in his ability to look for and find interesting, attainable, low-cost, and unique space missions involving both spacecraft that had already completed their primary missions and spacecraft that were yet to be designed," said APL's Jim McAdams, MESSENGER's Mission Design Lead, who worked alongside Farquhar for more than two decades. "Bob secured funds for mission design studies to ensure that multiple viable launch opportunities were designed and prepared for launch, a key contribution given that additional mandated spacecraft testing contributed to MESSENGER launching during its second backup launch opportunity. He also developed the skills and contacts needed to help make these missions happen, even when doing so required a miraculous competitive upset that most wouldn't believe was possible." Farquhar is survived by his wife, Irina, stepdaughter, Anya, and a host of relatives. --------------------------------------------------------------------- MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) is a NASA-sponsored scientific investigation of the planet Mercury and the first space mission designed to orbit the planet closest to the Sun. The MESSENGER spacecraft launched on August 3, 2004, and inserted into orbit about Mercury on March 18, 2011 (UTC). After orbiting the planet for more than four years, MESSENGER impacted Mercury on April 30, 2015. Dr. Sean C. Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, leads the mission as Principal Investigator. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory built and operated the MESSENGER spacecraft and manages this Discovery-class mission for NASA. Received on Sun 01 Nov 2015 11:48:44 PM PST |
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