9781422283301

Chapter 1

George Carruthers

Born: 1939 Nationality: American Achievements:

W hen Apollo 16 was launched from the Kennedy Space Cen- ter on April 16, 1972, it carried an ultraviolet (UV) camera de- signed by George Carruthers. The 50-pound, gold-plated apparatus was set up on the sur- face of the Moon and provided an unprec- edented look at Earth’s atmosphere, allow- ing for the measurement of concentrations of pollutants and providing images of more than 500 stars, nebulae , and galaxies. “One of the things that [made my work] very exciting and interesting is that in the early days of the space program almost every flight was something that was breaking new ground,” he said when he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2003, “especially in the astronomy area, where we were previously limited to telescopes from the ground.”

Engineer and inventor who created key parts of early Apollo missions

13