Jesco Von Puttkamer: 1933-2012
Jesco Von Puttkamer stands beside a model of the Saturn V rocket. Credit: NASA Jesco von Puttkamer, who began his NASA career in 1962, when he worked on Wernher von Braun’s rocket team as an engineer at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., during the Apollo Program, has died, following a brief illness. He was 79.
Von Puttkamer most recently worked in the International Space Station Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington as a technical manager.
“Jesco was an institution at NASA,” said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “His time here spanned almost the entire breadth of the agency’s human spaceflight programs. He was a direct link from von Braun’s efforts to get people off the ground to the International Space Station and 12 years of continuous human presence. We lost an outspoken advocate for NASA’s efforts to explore farther than we ever have gone before.”
Von Puttkamer received numerous awards during his 50 years at NASA. Among those honors was NASA’s prestigious Exceptional Service Medal in 2004. In 2007, he received a NASA Honor Award for successful initiatives of advancing American-Russian cooperation in spaceflight. In December 2008, the U.S.-wide German-American Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia honored von Puttkamer with its “Distinguished German-American of the Year” award. For this honor, he received congratulatory letters from President George W. Bush, then-NASA Administrator Michael Griffin and the Governors of the states of Pennsylvania and Virginia.
He is the author of more than a dozen books on spaceflight. His novelette, “The Sleeping God,” was published in the anthology “Star Trek: The New Voyages 2.” His diary/book on the first lunar landing by Apollo 11 was published in Beijing in 1982 in a Chinese translation. A revised edition of this book was published for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission in July 2009.
Von Puttkamer lived in Huntsville beginning in 1962 when he worked at Marshall with von Braun in the aeroballistics division. He came to NASA at von Braun’s personal invitation. In 1974, von Puttkamer transferred to NASA Headquarters.
Von Puttkamer is survived by his wife, Ursula.
