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Kenneth L. Atkins
Ken formally retired from Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in February 2002 after a thirty-four-year career in NASA’s deep-space exploration program. His career included developing advance...view moreKen formally retired from Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in February 2002 after a thirty-four-year career in NASA’s deep-space exploration program. His career included developing advanced mission ideas, managing JPL’s Power Systems Section and Command and Data Handling Systems Section, finally culminating as a project manager of a pioneering deep-space mission. As a retiree, he returned to JPL in a part-time role providing leadership for project managers and planners with mentoring activities and development of the workshop for training JPL project managers. He fully retired in May 2008.
Ken was project manager of the NASA’s Stardust project ( a sample-return mission to comet Wild 2). Stardust launched in February 1999 and was completely successful, flying through the dust cloud near the nucleus of the comet in 2004, collecting thousands of cometary particles. Enroute to Wild 2, Stardust collected a number of (2015-announced) grains of interstellar dust. All were returned to Earth (and the world’s scientists) in January 2006. Stardust is the first mission to return samples of a body beyond the Earth-Moon system. The sample return capsule (SRC) now resides in the National Air and Space Museum.
After turning Stardust over to JPL’s flight team in 2000, Ken served as the lead in developing JPL’s corrective actions in project management necessary after the loss of two spacecraft at Mars in 1999.
Previous to Ken’s technical and management career at JPL, he served nine years as an officer and pilot in the U.S. Air Force, flying a number of aircraft from SAC four-engine aerial refueling planes to bush planes and supersonic jets. He also served on a SAC Minuteman ICBM crew during the Cuban Missile Crisis, later commanding his own ICBM crew.
Ken has a BS in aeronautical engineering (AE) from St. Louis University (’58), MS in aerospace engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology (’66), and PhD in Aerospace Engineering (AE) from the University of Illinois (’74). Concurrent with his JPL career, he served over 30 years on the U of I AE Department’s Alumni Advisory Board, retiring from that role in 2012 to pursue activities with University of Southern California (USC) on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) inspiration of students through film. Ken has authored over thirty technical papers, magazine articles, and essays (abstracts and selected full texts are available on researchgate.net).
He holds NASA honors including the Exceptional Service and Outstanding Leadership medals. He was also honored with the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Illinois Aerospace Engineering Department and induction to his high school Hall of Fame. Ken was most recently honored by St. Louis University as a recipient of the Oliver L. Parks 2013 Alumni Merit Award.
He has been married to Barbara for over sixty-four years. They have a son, Lee, and daughter, Laurie, along with four grandchildren.view less