William J. O'Neil has been named Galileo Project Manager by JPL Director Dr. Lew Allen. O'Neil succeeds Richard J. Spehalski, who will manage the development of NASA's Space Infrared Telescope Facility.
Galileo is an unmanned spacecraft mission to explore the planet Jupiter, its satellites and its magnetosphere; it was launched October 18, 1989, aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis. The project is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
O'Neil has been Galileo's Science and Mission Design Manager since May 1980; in 1989 he also served as resident Project Office Representative at Cape Canaveral while the spacecraft was preparing for launch.
Previously he managed JPL's Mission Design Section and led the navigation teams on the Mariner 9 and Viking Projects. He joined JPL in 1963 and worked on the Surveyor lunar lander in the 1960's.
William O'Neil is an aeronautical engineering graduate of Purdue University and earned a Master's Degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Southern California. He is a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Married and with three adult children, he lives in Sierra Madre, California.
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