William J. O’Neil

William J. O’Neil has distinguished himself in aeronautical engineering.

William J. O’Neil

He is now retired and living in Sierra Madre, Calif., following a 37-year career at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Born in Milwaukee and raised in Hartford, Wis., O’Neil earned his bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from Purdue in 1961 and his master’s in the same field from the University of Southern California in 1967.

He began his career at Boeing Airplane Company and Lockheed Missiles and Space Company prior to joining the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1963.

O’Neil’s assignments at JPL have included trajectory design and navigation for Surveyor, the first soft-landing lunar spacecraft. He was the navigation chief for Mariner Mars, the first United States spacecraft to orbit another planet, and for Viking, the first soft-landing craft on Mars. In addition, he was the science and mission design manager for Project Galileo during its development phase throughout the 1980s, and then became Galileo project manager shortly after its launch in 1989. That spacecraft, an orbiter and an entry probe, arrived at Jupiter in December of 1995, becoming the first to penetrate an outer planet atmosphere and the first to orbit an outer planet in December of 1997. It went on to perform nearly six additional years of extended Jupiter orbital science gathering before being intentionally crashed into the planet in September of 2003 to prevent any chance of Earth spores reaching Jupiter’s moon Europa, which may itself harbor microbial life.

Following Galileo’s two-year primary mission, O’Neil was appointed chief technologist and then project manager for the Mars Exploration Program at JPL. However, that project was postponed and O’Neil became manager of JPL’s Systems Management Office until his retirement in 2001. He continues as chairman of the Space Exploration Committee of the International Astronautical Federation and is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics.

O’Neil has been honored with NASA’s highest award, the Distinguished Service Medal, for his management of Project Galileo. In 1997, he received the Purdue Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award and an honorary doctorate from the University of Padova in Italy, Galileo’s university.