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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, March 7, 2016 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

John Newcomb

"A Bunch of Plumbers"

ABSTRACT -- John Newcomb came to the NASA Langley Research Center as a Cooperative Engineering Student in the late 1950's and then as a graduate engineer in 1962.  He will first discuss the early days of the space effort including some early adventures at Wallops Island. The talk will then turn to two major missions in which he was involved: the Lunar Orbiter Mission ­that photographed the proposed Apollo landing sites ­and took the first picture of Earth from deep space, and the Viking Mission ­that performed the first successful landing on Mars in 1976.  Both of these histories are told with the personal experiences of the author and others who worked on the project.

SPEAKER -- John Newcomb grew up in Gloucester, Virginia.  After graduating from Virginia Tech, John joined the Langley Research Center as a young engineer and quickly became involved in two of NASA's early space missions – the Lunar Orbiter Project and the Viking Project.  After Viking, John headed NASA's Physics and Chemistry Experiments-in-Space Program that performed experiments in the free fall environment of NASA's Space Shuttle and the International Space Station.  John and his wife, Peggy, live in Gloucester Point, Virginia. 

Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov