Queen's Birthday Honours: Space pioneer Pickering honoured again

One of New Zealand's most famous living scientists, William Hayward Pickering, 92 -- who already holds an honorary knighthood under the old imperial honours system -- has been made an honorary member of the Order of New Zealand.

Established in 1987, this is the top honour in the New Zealand honours system. Dr Pickering receives an honorary appointment as he is now a United States citizen.

Dr Pickering was responsible for the United States' first space satellite and led its unmanned deep space research as director from 1954 to 1976 of California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

In 1958, when the United States became caught up in the space race with the Russian Sputnik programme, JPL was transferred to Nasa with responsibility for the unmanned exploration of the moon and planets.

Under Dr Pickering's leadership, JPL helped develop ballistic missiles with the capacity to deliver nuclear warheads around the globe. The technology was used not only in the first US satellites, but in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo manned spacecraft.

Throughout his career, Dr Pickering has kept contact with New Zealand and its scientific community.

In March, he returned to New Zealand to unveil a monument in Havelock, near Blenheim, that honoured him and atomic physicist Lord Rutherford, and to receive an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Canterbury University.

He was modest about the honours that have been heaped on him in his adopted country, and New Zealand -- where he was given an honorary knighthood in 1975 -- as well as Germany, Japan, Switzerland and Italy.

"My contributions have primarily been management, if you like, of a successful lab," he said.

Dr Pickering had been director of JPL for only a year when, in 1955, the US and Soviet governments announced their intentions to launch scientific satellites to mark the International Geophysical Year.

The Naval Research Laboratory, and not JPL, was chosen to work on the United States satellite, but on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I -- and changed everything.

"The existence of the Sputnik was a great shock to the people of the United States," Dr Pickering recalled.

"They suddenly realised that the Russians, who they thought of as peasants, had launched technology that was circling above them several times a day. That horrified people."

Sputnik ushered in the fear that the Soviets could win the Cold War space race and launch ballistic missiles at the US.

Immediately after the Sputnik I launch, the US Defence Department approved funding for another US satellite project, and Dr Pickering's laboratory -- under contract to the army -- began work on Explorer I.

Before either the army or navy could match Sputnik I, the Soviets launched Sputnik 2, on November 3. A month later, the US navy launched its Vanguard rocket. It blew up on the launch pad.

"We were put on the front line then," Dr Pickering said. "It was pretty tense."

His proudest moment was the night the first US satellite was successfully launched.

"The official government position was this wasn't a race, but it was," he said. "Okay, the Russians beat us, but we were pleased -- we were coming along now."

Months later, Congress passed the Space Act setting up the National Aeronautical and Space Agency (Nasa), and Dr Pickering was given a choice for JPL's involvement: Earth satellites, the manned space programme, or unmanned deep space research. He chose deep space.

Under his leadership, JPL developed the Mariner flights to Venus and Mars in the early to mid-1960s, the Ranger photographic missions to the moon in 1964-1965, and the Surveyor lunar landings of 1966-1967.

"I found interplanetary space travel the most interesting. I had a charter that basically said 'Go out and explore the solar system'. Wonderful," he said.

"We managed to do something the Russians hadn't done and sent a space ship to Venus. We showed them how to do it.

"Then came the first successful mission to Mars. The Soviets had tried and failed."

When Mariner 2 reached Venus in 1962, and the US could finally claim a "first" ahead of the Soviets, Dr Pickering made the cover of Time Magazine. All of which was a long way from his childhood in Havelock.

Dr Pickering was born in Wellington and raised in Havelock by his grandparents after his mother's death. At age 12, he started boarding at Wellington College, where he built an early radio station and established his interest in electricity.

In 1928, he studied engineering at Canterbury College, now Canterbury University, before his great-uncle encouraged him to study at Caltech in the US.

He was 18 when he left New Zealand and he fully intended to return, but he could find no engineering work when he graduated.

Caltech offered him a job and in 1936 he was made professor in charge of radio and electronics.

Later, after being asked to help researchers in Caltech's jet propulsion laboratory with an instruments problem, he joined the laboratory full-time, working on research contracts for the army.

Dr Pickering lives in La Canada, Flintridge, outside Los Angeles, with his wife, Inez. They married in 1994, following the death of his first wife, Muriel.

He still runs a successful business, Lignetics Inc, which manufactures wood and fuel pellets from sawdust.

- NZPA