"Aerospace Engineer" Robert J. Parks Hand Signed TLS dated 1962 For Sale

Up for sale "Aerospace Engineer" Robert J. Parks Hand Signed TLS dated 1962.

ES-3952D

Robert J. "Bob" Parks (April 1, 1922 –

June 3, 2011)  ROBERT J. PARKS, known as

Bob, was a US aerospace engineer and

pioneer in the space program where he was intricately involved and/or directed

for some of the most historic and important U.S. unmanned space missions. Over

a 40-year tenure at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL/NASA),

located in Pasadena, California, Parks’ impact was essential to helping the

United Stated lead the world in space exploration. He served as Guidance

Engineer for Explorer 1, the first successfully launched satellite by the

United States. He directed the initial flyby missions to the Moon (Ranger 7, 8

and 9 Missions), the first soft landing on the moon (Surveyor Lunar Lander), the world’s first successful mission

to another planet (Mariner 2 to Venus) and initial missions

to Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus. Parks concluded his career as Deputy

Director of the JPL/NASA and retired in 1987. Some of the awards he received

for his work include the NASA Exceptional Service

Medal (1967), the Stuart Ballantine Medal (1967),

the Goddard Astronautics Award (1980) and the Caltech Distinguished Alumni

Award in 1982. Robert Joseph Parks was born on 1 April 1922 in Los Angeles, California and grew up in Glendale and Balboa

Island.. His father was petroleum engineer Joseph Burton Parks, his mother was

Ruth (Feltz) Parks, and his brother was Jerome W. Parks.[2][3] He attended California Institute of Technology

(Caltech), where he played in the backfield on the freshman football team

(including one game in the Rose Bowl, Caltech’s home field) and was elected

to Tau Beta Pi, the honorary engineering fraternity. He graduated

with honors in 1944, with a BS degree in electrical engineering. From February

1944 to June 1946 he served with the US Army Signal Corps, including a tour in

occupied Europe. 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. He was discharged from the Army as a

first lieutenant. 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. She and Parks would later have three sons.[3] After leaving the army, Parks spent six months

at Hughes Aircraft before

starting work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

in April 1947.

During

his early years at the JPL, Parks started out as an engineer in the Guidance

and Control Section from 1947 to 1950 where he worked with Wernher von Braun in

White Sands, New Mexico to develop the guidance systems for the Army’s MGM-5

Corporal and MGM-29 Sergeant guided missiles. He then became Section Chief, and

from 1956 to 1957 was Division Chief of Research and Development. He was

Project Director for the Sergeant missile program from 1957 until June 1960

when the work at JPL was turning from missiles to spacecraft. Starting in May

1960, under Parks' direction, JPL/NASA conducted the world's first spacecraft

mission to another planet, the Mariner 2 mission to Venus in 1962; the Ranger

7, 8 and 9 missions in 1964 and 1965, which produced the first close-up photos

of the Moon; and the Mariner 4 mission to Mars in 1965.  In addition, he

was project manager for the Surveyor lunar lander series, the first soft

landing on the Moon, the precursor to the Apollo Maned Program in l965 and 66. Parks

also oversaw Mariner 5 to Venus in 1967; Mariners 6 and 7 to Mars in 1969;

Mariner 9 to Mars in 1971; Mariner 10, which in 1973 was the first spacecraft

to travel to the planet Mercury; and the JPL portion of NASA's Viking orbiter

and lander mission to Mars.  In l978 and l979, 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….Parks served in various roles at

JPL/NASA including Director of the Planetary Programs during the early 1960s

Assistant Laboratory Director (ALD) for Lunar and Planetary Projects in 1963.

He held this role through various name changes until 1981 when he became

JPL/NASA deputy director. In this position he was responsible for the

day-to-day management of JPL and for the direction of its technical,

administrative, and service activities until his retirement in 1987. Parks

received numerous awards for his distinguished service at JPL/NASA that include

the NASA Public Service Award (1963) and the NASA Exceptional Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics awarded

him its Louis W. Hill Award (1963) and Goddard Astronautics Award (1980). 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". In 1973, Parks was

elected to the National Academy of

Engineering for his: "Contributions in radio-inertial

guidance, communications methods, systems engineering, and project management

of spacecraft and missiles." He was awarded the Caltech Distinguished

Alumni Award in 1982. At the time of his retirement from JPL in 1987, Parks was

living with his wife Hanne in nearby La Cañada.[6] Parks died aged 89 on 3 June 2011.