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JoAnn H. Morgan (b. 1940)
Instrumentation Controller When the doors of the Launch Control Center were locked before the liftoff of Apollo 11, there was only one woman among the 450 men in the room. Her name is JoAnn Morgan, and she was the first female engineer hired at Kennedy Space Center (KSC). Morgan was born in Huntsville, Alabama to a pilot in the Army Air Corps and a statistician in the Army Corps of Engineers. When she was 17 years old her family moved to Titusville, Florida and Morgan witnessed the launch of Explorer 1 in 1958. That satellite sent back all kinds of scientific data including the discovery of the Van Allen Radiation Belt. Morgan realized that the knowledge of the universe was now accessible—and she had to be a part of it. She began work during the summers as a junior engineer with the Army Ballistic Missile Agency while in high school. After earning her mathematics degree from Jacksonville State University in Alabama in 1963 she started work as part of the site activation team at KSC. During a time when sexism was rampant and female engineers were almost unheard of, Morgan paved the way for future generations of women and continued to rise up the ranks. Throughout her expansive 45-year career with NASA, Morgan held several executive positions, including acting deputy director of Kennedy Space Center. Read more about JoAnn H. Morgan here |
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Chuck Lowry (b. 1932)
Apollo Parachute System Designer As the Apollo program got underway in the very beginning of the 1960’s, one of the biggest concerns was bringing the astronauts safely back to Earth. In order to do that, they would need to develop a parachute system unlike any other ever made, and there was only one person with the qualifications to do that. His name was Chuck Lowry. After receiving his engineering degree from the University of Kentucky, Lowry took a job at a nearby parachute company in Lexington. He later went to work for North American Aviation (NAA) designing ejection seats for military aircraft. In 1962, after NAA won the contract to design and build the Apollo spacecraft, Lowry became the chief designer of the parachute system, which was built at Northrup Ventura. Lowry and his team worked tirelessly to develop the final parachutes as the weight of the returning Apollo Command Module kept increasing. After 6 years of work and 139 drop tests, the final design of the Apollo parachute system was complete. |
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Don Eyles (b. 1944)
Software Engineer After receiving his degree in mathematics from Boston University in 1966, Don Eyles started working at Draper Labs at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There he worked as a software engineer for the Lunar Module’s onboard computer. He was responsible for writing the software for lunar descent and landing. On February 5, 1971, as astronauts Alan Shepard and Ed Mitchell were getting ready to descend to the lunar surface during Apollo 14, they realized an abort switch was jammed inside the Lunar Module. This meant that once they began their descent, the computer would abort the mission and prevent them from landing. A fix was needed and fast, because timing was critical. Back in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Draper Labs, Don Eyles got to work writing some new code to fix it. Once tested in a simulator, the software fix was communicated up to the astronauts who then had to manually punch the 61 keystrokes perfectly into the computers Display and Keyboard (DSKY). With only minutes to spare, the fix worked perfectly and after the mission Eyles received several commendations for his work. Find out more about Don Eyles and his Apollo memoir here |
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Ann D. Montgomery (b. 1946)
Flight Crew Equipment Engineer There was only one woman who had clearance to go out to the Apollo Launchpad. Her name was Ann Montgomery, and her job was to manage where everything was stowed on the Command Module. Food, TV cameras, experiments, lunar rock boxes, tools, and a myriad of other equipment had to be loaded inside 24 hours before liftoff. Where it was stowed was crucial, because the CM’s center of gravity had to be in a specific spot in order for it to fly during reentry. Montgomery started at NASA in June 1968, shortly after graduating from the University of Florida with a mathematics degree. She continued working for NASA while she earned a master’s degree in engineering. Montgomery was only 21 years old when she worked on her first mission—Apollo 7. She worked on every Apollo mission to the Moon and on many Space Shuttle missions before retiring from NASA in 2002. Read more about Ann D. Montgomery here. |
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Farouk El-Baz (b. 1938)
Geologist After studying every last mountain, crater, boulder, and rock depicted in thousands of photographs, no one knew the Moon better than Farouk El-Baz. Born and raised in Egypt, he discovered his love for geology on Boy Scout camping trips East of Cairo. In 1967, while working for Bellcomm Inc., a division of AT&T, El-Baz not only helped identify where the astronauts should land on the Moon, he also trained them in observation and photography. El-Baz even had a spacecraft named after him on the popular television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, which aired from 1987 to 1994. Read the NASA Oral History interview with Farouk El-Baz here |
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Don Rethke (b. 1938)
Apollo Lunar Module Life Support Systems Engineer Don Rethke was raised on a farm near Madison, WI, that had no running water and had an outhouse for a toilet. His interest in farm machinery led him to studying mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin. After serving 3 years in the Navy as the main propulsion officer on the USS Eldorado, he took a job at Hamilton Standard in Windsor Locks, CT. While at Hamilton Standard, Rethke was involved in working on the Apollo life support systems for both the Lunar Module and the Life Support Backpacks. Later in the program, Rethke was the lead designer for a space toilet, which was used on the Space Shuttle, earning him the nickname, “Dr. Flush”. Rethke continues to volunteer his time speaking at schools and museums, sharing his experiences working in the space program. You can read more about Don Rethke here. |
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