[meteorite-list] Former MESSENGER Mission Manager Robert Farquhar Dies at Age 83

[Ron Baalke]

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=289

MESSENGER Mission News
October 23, 2015

Former MESSENGER Mission Manager Robert Farquhar Dies at Age 83

Robert W. Farquhar, an early MESSENGER Mission Manager and a planetary 
trajectory pioneer who designed some of the most esoteric and complex 
spacecraft trajectories ever attempted, died on October 18, at the age 
of 83. A 50-year veteran of deep-space missions, Farquhar made pivotal 
contributions to the exploration of comets, asteroids, and the planets.

"Bob Farquhar was critical to the MESSENGER mission, from initial concept 
through launch and early operations," offered MESSENGER Principal Investigator 
Sean Solomon, of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. 
"His competitive drive to achieve new firsts in space, his enthusiasm 
for attempting difficult tasks, and his brilliantly creative and technically 
thorough solutions to mission design challenges set a tone for the entire 
MESSENGER team. That MESSENGER was selected for flight, completed a record 
six planetary flybys, and became the first spacecraft to successfully 
orbit Mercury is in no small measure the result of Bob's inspiration, 
passion, and skill at problem solving. The entire MESSENGER team will 
miss him."

Farquhar was born in 1932 and raised in Chicago. He showed an interest 
in aviation as a child, reading about the topic and designing and building 
model airplanes. After serving in the Army in Japan during the Korean 
War, he studied aeronautical engineering at the University of Illinois 
and received his bachelor's degree with honors in 1959. He went on to 
earn a master's degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, 
in 1961. He worked briefly at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in Sunnyvale, 
California, after which he completed a Ph.D. at Stanford University in 
1969.

>From 1969 to 1990, Farquhar worked at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center 
in Greenbelt, Maryland, and at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. In 
1988, as Chief of Advanced Programs with the Space Physics Division, and 
Program Manager for the Discovery Program with the Solar System Exploration 
Division, he became involved in planning spacecraft missions to Mercury 
and Pluto.

"I was intrigued with the possibility of developing low or moderate-cost 
mission and spacecraft designs that could lead to realizable flight missions 
with many 'firsts,'" he wrote in his memoir, Fifty Years on the Space 
Frontier: Halo Orbits, Comets, Asteroids, and More.

Farquhar commissioned a study from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) 
of a Mercury orbiter mission. JPL proposed a two-spacecraft Mercury Dual 
Orbiter (MDO) mission that would be launched on a single launch vehicle. 
Although the MDO mission was never selected for flight, several aspects 
of its mission design and operations concepts were adopted by the MESSENGER 
mission.

MESSENGER was selected by NASA as the seventh Discovery mission in 1999, 
and Farquhar -- by that time at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics 
Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland -- was appointed Mission Manager 
during the mission's development phase. In that role, he supervised the 
mission design and navigation tasks, and he coordinated many activities 
of the science, engineering, and mission operations teams. He also worked 
closely with Deep Space Network (DSN) representatives at JPL to ensure 
that MESSENGER would have adequate DSN coverage following launch.

As Mission Manager, Farquhar was heavily involved in MESSENGER's pre-launch 
mission design, said his long-time collaborator David Dunham. "He made 
a notable decision late in the spacecraft design process when he found 
out that the spacecraft could not deliver a delta-V in all directions. 
Bob insisted on correcting that deficiency by adding two small thrusters, 
later informally called the 'Farquhar thrusters,' pointing toward the 
Sun through holes cut in the sunshade."

Farquhar retired from APL in 2007 and stepped down from his position as 
Mission Manager. In a new position he accepted at KinetX, Inc., he remained 
involved with the mission, serving as an advisor for MESSENGER's navigation 
team.

In his memoir, he wrote that his most important contribution to the MESSENGER 
mission was initiating the MDO study. It "changed the mind-set of NASA 
and the scientific community where a majority of people believed that 
a Mercury orbiter mission could only be done by employing solar-electric 
propulsion," he wrote. "This study set the stage for the acceptance of 
a low-cost ballistic mission to orbit Mercury."

In addition to MESSENGER, Farquhar made fundamental contributions to several 
other space missions, including the Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR). He served 
as the first Mission Manager for NASA's New Horizons mission. Following 
a trajectory that Farquhar envisioned, that spacecraft flew past dwarf 
planet Pluto and its family of small moons this past July. He also conceived, 
and was the flight director for, the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) 
mission to asteroid 433 Eros -- the first launch of the Discovery program 
and the first planetary exploration mission led by APL.

"Bob was like no other in his ability to look for and find interesting, 
attainable, low-cost, and unique space missions involving both spacecraft 
that had already completed their primary missions and spacecraft that 
were yet to be designed," said APL's Jim McAdams, MESSENGER's Mission 
Design Lead, who worked alongside Farquhar for more than two decades. 
"Bob secured funds for mission design studies to ensure that multiple 
viable launch opportunities were designed and prepared for launch, a key 
contribution given that additional mandated spacecraft testing contributed 
to MESSENGER launching during its second backup launch opportunity. He 
also developed the skills and contacts needed to help make these missions 
happen, even when doing so required a miraculous competitive upset that 
most wouldn't believe was possible."

Farquhar is survived by his wife, Irina, stepdaughter, Anya, and a host 
of relatives.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

MESSENGER (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) 
is a NASA-sponsored scientific investigation of the planet Mercury and 
the first space mission designed to orbit the planet closest to the Sun. 
The MESSENGER spacecraft launched on August 3, 2004, and inserted into 
orbit about Mercury on March 18, 2011 (UTC). After orbiting the planet 
for more than four years, MESSENGER impacted Mercury on April 30, 2015. 
Dr. Sean C. Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, leads 
the mission as Principal Investigator. The Johns Hopkins University Applied 
Physics Laboratory built and operated the MESSENGER spacecraft and manages 
this Discovery-class mission for NASA.