Project manager of Pluto mission to speak at K-State College of Engineering Eyestone Lecture

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Source: Richard Hayter, 785-532-5590, rhayter@k-state.edu
News release prepared by: Mary Rankin, 785-532-6715, mrankin@k-state.edu

Thursday, October 19, 2006

PROJECT MANAGER OF PLUTO MISSION TO SPEAK AT K-STATE COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING EYESTONE LECTURE

MANHATTAN -- Glen H. Fountain, project manager of NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto, will present "New Horizons: A Journey to the Third Region of the Solar System" at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26, in Kansas State University's Fiedler Hall Auditorium.

New Horizons is the first spacecraft to travel to Pluto and the distant Kuiper Belt region beyond the planet Neptune.

The event is a part of the K-State College of Engineering Eyestone Lecture Series and is open to the public.

Fountain received his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from K-State in 1965 and 1966, respectively, and joined the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in 1966.

During his early career at the Applied Physics Laboratory, he held a number of appointments and supported a range of programs including the small astronomy satellite program, the transit improvement program, and the magnetic field satellite program. As supervisor of the laboratory's space science instrument group, he led the ultraviolet and visible instrument developments for the Delta series of missions.

Fountain served as program manager for the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope in the 1980s and the Special Sensor Ultraviolet Spectrographic Imager in the early 1990s. From the early 1990s until 2003, he was supervisor of the Applied Physics Laboratory Space Department Engineering and Technology Branch. He is currently the project manager of the New Horizons mission to Pluto, which was launched in January 2006 and will reach the frozen, distant world in summer 2015.

The Eyestone Lecture Series, established in 2000, is funded by an endowment of the late Fred and Mona Eyestone. Fred Eyestone, a 1941 K-State graduate in electrical engineering, was a member of the College of Engineering Advisory Council and a K-State Distinguished Service Award recipient.