John R. Casani

John R. Casani was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 17, 1932, to Jack and Julia Casani. He attended St. Joseph's Preparatory School, where he studied no scientific technical subjects. He then entered the University of Pennsylvania with the intention of becoming a liberal arts major. During his sophomore year, he decided that the employment prospects for liberal arts majors were unpromising and decided to join the United States Air Force. When his father objected, he decided instead to major in electrical engineering like his college roommate. The roommate eventually dropped out, but Casani received his Bachelor of Science degree in the discipline in 1955. == Jet Propulsion Laboratory ==

After graduation, Casani worked at the Rome Air Development Center in New York state. In 1956, he moved to Southern California, where he lived in his fraternity's house at the University of Southern California while looking for work. He was offered a position at North American Aviation working its Navaho missile project, but Jack James convinced him to join the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he worked on the guidance system for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency's Jupiter missile until the Sputnik crisis resulted in a change of priorities. After a hiatus, the Ghoul returned on Mariner 7, and Casani received drawing and paintings of the Ghoul. Casani also got the idea of an artifact attached to the spacecraft, "a message representing humanity to any alien civilization that might encounter humanity’s first interstellar emissaries." He asked astronomer Carl Sagan to think about it, and the idea evolved into the Voyager Golden Record. Casani served as project manager for the Voyager program from 1975 to 1977, and after its successful launches was promptly reassigned to the Galileo, for which he worked from 1977 to 1988. It remained in orbit around Jupiter until 2003. He became the Deputy Assistant Laboratory Director for Flight Projects in 1988, and Assistant Laboratory Director for Flight Projects in 1989. In 1994, he became Project Manager of the Cassini project. Casani was described as a "good-natured" man, but was an autocratic project manager, nicknamed "Ayatollah Casani" by his colleagues. Casani retired in 1999, but the retirement was a brief one; he was recalled two weeks later to work with the Johnson Space Center on a problem that could have caused the loss of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission. He then headed up an internal JPL investigation of the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter, Mars Polar Lander and Deep Space 2 probes, launched under cost-reduced "faster, better, cheaper" period, and was project manager for Project Prometheus until its termination in 2005. Casani retired from JPL in 2012. == Personal life and death ==

Casani was married for 39 years to Lynn Casani; she died in 2008. They had five sons. His papers are held by the Jet Propulsion Library and Archives. == Awards ==

Over a long career at JPL, Casani received many awards, including the NASA Distinguished Service Medal in 1991, the NASA Exceptional Service Medal in 1965, the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal in 1999 and 2000, and the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal in 1974 and 1981. He received the Management Improvement Award for the Mariner Venus Mercury mission in 1974, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' Space Systems Award in 1979, and the National Aerospace Club's Astronautics Engineer Award in 1981 for the Galileo project. He was also awarded the von Karman Lectureship in 1990, the American Astronautical Society Space Flight Award in 1989 and William Randolph Lovelace II Award in 2005, He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000, == Selected publications ==

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