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Incoming links: William H. Pickering in the JPL directors' biographies
Bill Pickering (rocket scientist) Created 2026-10-24 Updated 2026-11-05
Bill Pickering (rocket scientist) was an electrical engineer whose work connected electronic instrumentation with robotic space exploration. His experience designing telemetry equipment brought him to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he later served as director from 1954 to 1976.[ref]
William H. Pickering in the JPL directors' biographies. Career and JPL directorship
During that period, JPL participated in the launch of Explorer 1 and developed spacecraft for studying the Moon and planets. The Ranger program returned close-up lunar images and the Surveyor program achieved soft landings. Those missions illustrate the coupled engineering problem: an instrument must make a useful measurement, and the spacecraft must control its operation and communicate the result across a large distance.[ref]
William H. Pickering in the JPL directors' biographies. Explorer I, Ranger, Surveyor and planetary missions
Portrait of Bill Pickering (rocket scientist)
. NASA/JPL-Caltech. Public domain (NASA). Source usage terms, via Wikimedia Commons. Source.