WCOBSERVER OBITUARY: DOUGLAS MUDGWAY

Nasa Consultant And Historian

Douglas Mudgway (Class of 1940) passed away on 20 December, 2022 at the age of 99 in Sonoma, California, USA. He was born in Auckland, in 1923. At an early age, his family moved to Kaitaia where he received his primary school education. In 1933, his family moved to Upper Hutt to take advantage of higher- level education opportunities.

In 1936, Douglas enrolled at Wellington College where, for the four years he evinced an outstanding aptitude for Science and Mathematics. In 1940, he began a Bachelor of Science degree in those subjects at Victoria University.

This course which emphasised Radio Physics was intended to prepare students for technical military service after graduation. By the time of his graduation, WWII was drawing to a close and shortly thereafter, Douglas joined the NZ Department of Scientific and Industrial Research at the Dominion Physical Laboratory (DPL) in Lower Hutt as a physicist engaged on radar development for peacetime applications.

In 1948, he was transferred to the Australian Department of Supply to work as a scientific officer on radar instrumentation for the Woomera rocket test range in central Australia, dividing his time between laboratories there and in England at the Royal Aircraft Establishment.

Prior to departing for Australia, Douglas married Dudleigh Victoria Houston, from Wellington. Together they started a family in Australia, all of whom later became US citizens.

In 1962, he accepted a job offer as a development engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory center of (NASA/JPL) in Pasadena, California and moved to United States with his family in 1962 to join the NASA/JPL program for Exploration of the Solar System. published by NASA in April, 2002, and, Big Dish; Building America’s Deep Space Connection to the Planets, was published in March 2005 by University Press of Florida.

On arriving at JPL, he was astonished to be greeted by the Director who, like himself, turned out to be a former student of Wellington College. His name was Dr William Pickering. At NASA/JPL, Douglas was the Manager for Deep Space Tracking and Data Acquisition of the Surveyor Moon landing spacecraft (1966), the Viking Mars Landers (1976), and for the Galileo Mission to Jupiter from its inception in 1978, until his retirement in 1991.

He was awarded the NASA Exceptional Service Medal for his work on Viking in 1978, and in 1991, he received a second award, the Exceptional Achievement Medal for his contribution to the Galileo mission.

He retired to live in the Sonoma Valley, California wine country Douglas continued to be involved with the NASA Space Program as an independent consultant in the field of planetary data communications, and to write extensively on his lifelong association with the United States space program of planetary exploration.

Douglas' book on Deep Space, a biography of deep space pioneer, William H. Pickering, former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California was published by the NASA History Office in December 2007.

In 2008, Pickering was selected by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics for its annual award for the best history manuscript dealing with the impact of space technology or science on society. Through the generosity of the NZ Institute of Professional Engineers, copies of this book were purchased and distributed to all the high school libraries in New Zealand in recognition of New Zealand's most distinguished space pioneer.

▲ Douglas visited Wellington College in 2009 to launch his book 'William H Pickering - America's Deep Space Pioneer'. He and Roger Moses stand in front of the Scholarship Boards to highlight Dr Pickering as a recipient.

Douglas is the author of two recent books on the history of deep space technology: Uplink-Downlink; A History of the NASA Deep Space Network from 1957 to 1997, was

He also wrote, Where Are You From, Originally?, a book describing Douglas' personal journey from the far North of New Zealand to the high-tech field of space exploration at NASA, which was published in the US in 2010.

Douglas passed away peacefully in Sonoma, California, USA on 20 December, 2022. He is survived by his three adult children and their spouses, seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren.