Space
scientist William "Bill" Borucki is a soft-spoken, pleasant person who grew up
in a small town in Wisconsin where he liked to build and launch rockets. He
still does, and he convinced NASA to build and launch Kepler, the first
spacecraft capable of finding Earth-size planets orbiting other stars.
Bill
displays a number of similarities to another mild-mannered Midwesterner, a guy
named Clark Kent. As the force behind what many call "NASA's
coolest mission," Bill summoned veritable superpowers to get the innovative
Kepler mission off the ground. Knowing what he and his team have accomplished,
you get the feeling there might be a giant "S" hiding under that unassuming
shirt and tie.
While
Superman could fly to other worlds with relative ease, he didn't have to
navigate the maze of changing requirements, reallocated funding, technical
issues, and political challenges that Bill has helped steered the Kepler
mission through. Even with X-ray vision, he might not have been able to foresee
the obstacles. But he was there to watch his dream come true on March 6 when
the Kepler
spacecraft took off from Cape Canaveral, faster than a speeding bullet, on
its way to search for other habitable worlds.
Bill grew
up in Delevan, Wisconsin, a great place for a boy who loved science and
building things. He was president of the school's science club - the students
liked to reject the teacher's suggestions for projects and pursue their own
ideas. "We decided to build a transmitter to contact UFOs," he said, "so I
built the ultraviolet transmitter and others built the visible and infrared
transmitters and a magnetometer. I don't think any of them worked all that
well, but we had a great time. I learned so much trying to build these things. You
don't always have to succeed to learn a lot."
Young Bill
also belonged to a rocket club, and he got interested in amateur radio and
building electronic equipment and antennae. He enjoyed communicating with other
people around the world. Bill remembers the very dark night sky and how it lit
up with stars during the new moon. He and his friends built telescopes and
cameras to photograph the stars. In the summertime, they rode their bicycles to
the Yerkes Observatory at nearby Lake Geneva to look through the 40-inch
telescope. "Great big things were nice to look at," he said, "but the fun
was to build things yourself from your own ideas, because then you understood
how they worked."
His parents
were not science-oriented but they were encouraging. Bill and his father built
everything from a backyard tower to hold his antenna to soapbox derby cars and
model airplanes. Bill attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison and he
found college to be a wonderful experience. He especially enjoyed meeting
people with different ideas.
Bill earned
both a B. S. and M. S. in physics, then applied for a job at NASA, the only
place he considered. "I wanted to work on spacecraft," he recalled, "and NASA
was it." He got offers from both NASA's Ames Research Center in Northern
California and Lewis (now Glenn) Research Center in Cleveland. His father
advised him to go west, and he's been at Ames ever since. "I've really enjoyed
working at NASA. It has always been fascinating," he said. "It's a great way to
go through life, attacking worthwhile problems with a good team."
In his
early years at Ames, he conducted studies on the radiation environment of entry
vehicles. When he found that the existing spectrograph didn't work for the
types of extreme tests they were conducting, he designed and built a new one.
The results of his investigations were used in the design of the heat shields
to protect the Apollo
astronauts during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.
Next he
worked in the Theoretical Studies Branch where they studied the atmospheres of
Earth and other planets and built theoretical models of the atmosphere to
understand how mankind's influence would change it. His group published many
papers on how ozone would be affected by nitrogen oxides. "We didn't predict a
hole in the ozone layer," he said, "but we did predict that the decrease would
be seen first at the poles."
Another
area of Bill's research concerned the effects of lightning activity in
planetary atmospheres. He conducted a variety of laboratory studies and
participated in spacecraft observations to determine the amount and
distribution of lightning activity on other planets. He also earned a second M.
S. in meteorology.
During this
time Bill's interests merged. He focused his knowledge of spectroscopy and
photometry and his theoretical studies of planetary atmospheres into thinking
about how photometry and spectrometry could be used to find other
planets.
These
revolutionary ideas resulted in a paper he published in 1984, "The photometric
Method of Detecting Other Planetary Systems." The following year he published
"Detectability of Extrasolar Planetary Transits." He pursued his ideas with
patience and persistence and developed experimental systems to prove the
transits method of finding extrasolar planets. In 2000 he proposed a
planet-finding mission to NASA, in response to a call for Discovery mission
proposals. The Kepler Mission was selected as the 10th Discovery Mission in
December 2001.
Kepler
encountered many unforeseen and unpredictable delays throughout the various
development phases. "We're doing something new that's never been done," he
said. "It means there are going to be surprises and difficulties to surmount.
We have a wonderful team of people from Ames, JPL, universities, non-profits
and other NASA centers. I admire very much the people at NASA Headquarters who
supported us through all our difficulties. It's been great working with everyone."
Kepler has
28 co-investigators on the science team and dozens of other collaborators. In
Europe a team of over 200 scientists has formed the Kepler Astreroseismic
Science Consortium. They will use Kepler data for the first time to see what's
going on inside a star - how fast it rotates, how much of the hydrogen has been
burned, and the star's density.
Bill's
family joined him to witness the launch in Florida. He met his wife in college,
and they have 3 daughters and 8 grandkids. "I've been working on this idea for
25 years," he said, "so my kids and grandkids have heard about it since they
were born. They were delighted to be at the launch, which was magnificent. The
solid rockets looked like sparklers as they fell away from the rocket. It was
like the spirit of all the team was being launched into space after dedicating
so much time and effort to get it into orbit."
The Kepler
Mission has dominated Bill's life in recent times, often 10 hours a day, 7 days
a week. He said that seeing Kepler launch and knowing it will answer a very big
question - "Are there lots of Earths out there or are we alone?" - is
tremendously satisfying and worth the 25 years of effort and sacrifice that's
been required. Everyone is very excited about looking at the results and
understanding the implications. The first download of science data was received in June
and the search for planets has begun.
Bill's
advice for students who have an interest in space exploration is to take the
core subjects of mathematics, physics, chemistry and engineering. "But you also
need to take courses to make sure you can write and speak well," he said. "You
will spend a lot of time communicating your ideas and interacting with others
to solve problems. If you can't inspire others to work on these ideas with you,
you'll never do it by yourself. You really need to speak clearly about your
goals and why they're important."
Bill sets a
great example for pursuing your dreams, convincing others of their value, and
persevering to realize your goals. He looks forward to seeing what questions
the next group of young scientists will ask and what answers they will uncover.
Scientists,
computer scientists, engineers and educators at the SETI Institute are a part
of Bill Borucki's team for the Kepler Mission.
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