by John Casani, who died at the age of 92, was an American space engineer who led the teams who have been running the exploration of NASA’s planets since the beginning of space age. They took the first close-ups and scientific measurements of distant planets, moons and asteroids over the length and width of our solar system-vom burning mercury to freezing Neptune, in the space that have been unequal before or since then.
Casani worked in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of NASA (JPL) in California and has been at the center of the Golden Age of Space Research for five decades since the late 1950s. Some of his space vehicles from the 1970s still work in the deep room after he has survived it.
His early spaceship was so small that he drove them around in a briefcase – but despite their primitive design, they were the first objects that escaped the gravity of the earth and measured the radiation belts of our planet.
Casani was a project manager for the two NASA Voyager probes who left the earth for the external planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in 1977. Although Voyager 2 was the fastest artificial craft, it took 12 years to achieve the final planet Neptune. After both voyagers have left our solar system and entered blank interstellar space and have been approaching for 48 years. Voyager 1 moves with more than 38,000 miles per hour, the still the fastest object built by humans.
The two crafts carry the famous Voyager Golden Records who have messages for all foreign civilizations that could stumble across these earthly emissary in a distant corner of the galaxy. Casani asked the astronomer Carl Sagan to find the content – recordings of natural noises, including surf, wind and animals, greetings in 55 languages, music, pictures of the earth and drawings by two naked people.
Casani later led the Galileo mission to Jupiter for a decade. In 1985 the closed spaceship was transferred to Cape Canaveral in Florida when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in flight and killed seven crews. Galileo was designed for the start on another shuttle, but the fleet was ground and missed the carefully planned trajectory to her destination. Galileo was still on Earth for four years, while Casanis team found a complicated new way to Jupiter via Venus, two asteroids and two Fly-Bies on earth.
In everything that was ready for a second attempt to start, anti-nuclear demonstrators threatened to disrupt the mission due to concerns about the nuclear power sources he supported. The spaceship was delivered to the Kennedy Space Center by a high-speed truck convoy that left JPL in the middle of the night.
Fearing that the trucks could be kidnapped by the demonstrators or terrorists who could be looking for the plutonium, the route was kept secret in advance in advance. They drove over the United States in an almost continuous journey. Protests broke out when activists stormed the space center and three were detained, but Galileo was launched without incidents.
After 18 months near Venus and Earth, Galileo was ordered to develop its main antenna when it sailed deeper into space. But the mechanism had now spent four years in unplanned storage and would not work. Without the great antenna, the stream of photos and data from the distant Jupiter would be a lean gutter. Casani and his team have two smaller antennas new and accused most of the scientific goals of the mission.
John Richard Casani was born on September 17, 1932 as the son of Jack and Julia Casani in Philadelphia and spent his childhood in the city’s suburbs. At a young age he was fascinated by mechanical devices and invented several for the house of his parents – a garage door opener and automatic light switch. He completed electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 1955.
After a short job in the Rome Air Development Center of the US Air Force in New York, he went on a moody road trip to California, which was driven by a lack of direction in life. But he was soon hired by Nasas’ secretive Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, where he stayed, almost accidentally.
In addition to the voyagers and Galileo, Casani also worked on room probes on the moon, Mars and Saturn. In 1994 he was appointed chief engineer of JPL, a position that was specially created for him.
Casani wrote down the moons of Jupiter (2004), which described the discoveries of the Galileo probe of NASA. He also appeared in the most widespread documentation from 2017 via the Voyager trade. He did not live to see his biography to explore: John Casanis Grand Tour through Jay Gallenine’s solar system, which is to be released in December 2025.
John Casanis Ms. Lynn, born Seitz, died in 2008. The couple had five sons.
John Casani, born on September 17, 1932, died on June 19, 2025
