Worcester Business Journal

10 Worcester Business Journal | July 22, 2019 | wbjournal.com starts behind him, it wasn't as if Goddard knew the rocket would suddenly launch that day. "ere were plenty of times when it didn't work," Williams said. A day later, though, Goddard had a chance to reflect a bit more about what had happened. "Even though the release was pulled, the rocket did not rise at first, but the flame came out, and there was a steady roar," he wrote. "Aer a number of seconds it rose, slowly until it cleared the frame, and then at express train speed, curving over to the le, and striking the ice and snow, still going at a rapid rate. "It looked almost magical as it rose, without any appreciably greater noise or flame," Goddard wrote, "as if it said, 'I've been here long enough; I think I'll be going somewhere else, if you don't mind.'" Alexander, from Houston, compared Goddard's contributions to two other trailblazers whose names are also not particularly well known: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian scientist who developed a prominent theory on rocket power a quarter-century before Goddard's inaugural launch, and Wernher von Braun, a German-born scientist who was among the top developers of NASA's space missions starting in the 1950s. NASA calls Goddard's achievements as significant to history as the Wright brothers' first flight in 1903. In fact, Aldrin – whose father was a student of Goddard's – came to Clark just a month before the July 1969 Apollo 11 launch to help inaugurate the university's new library in Goddard's name. "At that time, just being able to control the combustion, to get the performance out of the engine, that was groundbreaking work," said Ramon Lugo, the director of the Florida Space Institute at the University of Central Florida. Lingering legacy in Worcester While rocket-fueled space explo- ration took its roots from that field in Auburn in 1926, Goddard's success was hardly the last time American space exploration would rely on Central Mas- sachusetts ingenuity. Worcester manufacturer David Clark Co. designed and manufactured the space suits worn in the early phases of the NASA program, the Gemini missions in 1965 and 1966. ough another manufacturer was used by the time Apollo 11 made it to the Moon, David Clark provided suits for the Space Shuttle era, which lasted from 1981 to 2011, and the Constellation program from 2005 to '09. David Clark continues to provide space suits today for the Orion pro- gram, which is setting a foundation for deep-space exploration, and the Com- mercial Crew program, which works with private partners including Boeing and SpaceX to develop new human space flights. A David Clark subsidiary is provid- ing all the hardware, connectors, helmet and visor assemblies for an extrave- hicular mobility unit servicing the International Space Station, said Daniel Barry, the company's vice president for aerospace life support systems. In Westford, the Haystack Observato- ry is part of MIT's facilities to research astronomy. e complex includes the Westford Radio Telescope, built in 1961, which has been used to test long-range communications and enhance research- er's understanding of Earth's positioning in space. A central figure to NASA's latest efforts to further future human space exploration is WPI President Laurie Leshin, whose Twitter account – @Lau- rieOfMars – is full of odes to her love of space travel and her time with the space agency. Leshin joined NASA in 2005 as director of science and exploration at the Goddard Space Flight Center. She later became deputy associate adminis- trator for exploration systems, playing a major role in everything from NASA's aid for startup missions and space- based telescopes and other instruments studying the sun, Moon and planets, to developing future human spaceflight activities and commercial capabilities for low-Earth orbit transport. Leshin published more than 40 sci- entific papers and won NASA's Distin- guished Public Ser- vice Medal in 2004 aer developing an interdisciplinary School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. e Interna- tional Astronomical Union recognized her contributions to planetary science by naming an asteroid aer her. She became WPI's president in 2014. Academic research While Clark University in Worcester is no engineering or science power- house today, one physics professor, Michael Boyer, is carrying the torch from Goddard in a small way through research he is performing with a Wellesley College professor seeking to find how molecules form in dust clouds found in spaces between stars. e researchers grow ice in a vacuum as a simulator for deep space. "We're trying to understand the or- igins of life," Boyer said. At WPI, a team of researchers led by electrical and computer engineering professor Alex- ander Wyglinski, used the International Space Station to test space communi- cations with implications for future space missions. e just-concluded research, for which NASA contributed Continued from Page 9 Worcester manufacturer David Clark Co. made space suits for more than a half dozen NASA programs, the longest of which was the Space Shuttle Program. Alexander Wyglinski, WPI computer engineering professor WPI President Laurie Leshin "We're kind of the Kitty Hawk of modern space exploration." Charles Slatkin, a Clark University graduate and advocate of Robert Goddard PHOTO ILLUSTRATION/DAVID CLARK CO.

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