William Pickering was born in Havelock What is he famous for?

Answer 1

Honours

IEEE Edison Medal in 1972, for contributions to telecommunications, rocket guidance and spacecraft control, and for inspiring leadership in unmanned exploration of the solar system.

National Medal of Science in 1975 awarded by President Gerald Ford.

Honorary (because of his American citizenship) Knight Commander in the Order of the British Empire in 1975.

Japan Prize in 1994.

2 June 2003 he became an honorary member of the Order of New Zealand.

1965 The Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand (IPENZ) Honorary Fellowship.

Mr. Pickering is one of the few non-politicians to have appeared on the cover of Time twice.

On the first day of February 1958, three men held aloft a model of Explorer 1, America's first Earth satellite, for the press photographers. That image of William Pickering, Wernher von Braun, and James Van Allen became an icon for America's response to the Sputnik challenge.

From humble beginnings in a remote country town in New Zealand, Pickering came to California in 1928 and quickly established himself as an outstanding student at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

At Caltech, Pickering worked under the famous physicist Robert Millikan on cosmic-ray experiments, at that time a relatively new field of physics. In 1944, when Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) was developing rocket propulsion systems for the U.S. Army, Pickering joined the workforce as a technical manager. He quickly established himself as an outstanding leader, and 10 years later, Caltech named him Director of JPL.

And then, suddenly, the world changed. In October 1957, the Sputnik satellite startled the world with its spectacular demonstration of Soviet supremacy in space.

Pickering led an intense JPL effort that joined with the von Braun and Van Allen teams to answer the Soviet challenge. Eighty-three days later, on 31st January 1958, America's first satellite roared into Earth's orbit.

A few months after that, Pickering's decision to affiliate JPL with the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration set the basis for his subsequent career and the future of NASA's ambitious program for the exploration of the solar system.

In the early days of the space program, failure followed failure as Pickering and his JPL team slowly ascended "learning curve". Eventually, however, NASA and JPL resolve paid off. First the Moon, then Venus, and then Mars yielded their scientific mysteries to JPL of ever-increasing sophistication.

Within the first decade, JPL-built spacecraft sent back the first close-up photographs of the lunar surface, while others journeyed far beyond the Moon to examine Venus and return the first close-up of the surface of Mars. Later, even more complex space missions made successful soft-landings on the Moon and on Mars.

Pickering's sudden death in March 2004 at the age of 93 was widely reported in the U.S. and overseas. As one NASA official eulogized him, "His pioneering work formed the foundation upon which the current program for exploring our solar system was built."