Raymond L. Heacock has been appointed deputy assistant laboratory director for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's recently formed Office of Space Science and Instruments.
The office oversees space science research efforts and manages development of the Laboratory's many instruments used in astronomy, planetary science and in studying the Earth's atmosphere, land masses and oceans.
Heacock joined JPL in 1953 and has held several key engineering and flight project positions.
During the 1960s he served as member of the Ranger Project's imaging science team. The Ranger series of scientific spacecraft obtained the first high-resolution pictures of the Moon.
Heacock has served as spacecraft system manager, deputy project manager and project manager of the Voyager Project, which has been exploring the outer solar system since 1977. Following Voyager I's encounter with Saturn in 1980, Heacock managed studies for proposed mission to Halley's Comet and became manager of JPL's Mariner Mark II program, designed to conduct future outer solar system missions in the 1990s.
In 1982, he was appointed acting manager of the Wide Field/Planetary Camera (WF/PC) Project. The WF/PC is the principal instrument of the of the Hubble Space Telescope, scheduled to be launched in 1989.
For the past five years Heacock has served as manager of the Special Programs Office, recently renamed the Flight Instruments Office, which directs all non-planetary flight instrument programs for the Laboratory.
A native of Santa Ana, Calif., Heacock graduated from Caltech with bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering.
Heacock and his wife are the parents of three children and reside in La Crescenta.
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