William and Sharon Garber

William (Bill) and Sharon Garber met at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where they worked on the Viking Mars landers and Voyager spacecraft. Bill and Sharon were among the first to have signatures on another planet via the Microdots aboard the Mars Viking. Sharon was a secretary to two departments ?€“ Parts Testing and Failure Analysis and a backup for the Section Manager's secretary. Bill was the Principal Test Engineer for Radiation testing after the Pioneer 10 spacecraft flew by Jupiter and experienced a massive, unexpected radiation bombardment. The results of the radiation testing were used to design shielding for the Voyager spacecraft. To this day, Voyager is still sending back data from outside the Solar system and nearly one light day away. A host of fellow JPL employees attended their wedding luncheon in July 1971 at the Rose Bowl Restaurant ?€“ these were the best jobs they ever had.

Bill was also a Test and Evaluation engineer for the Sensor Evolution Development (SED) program for the Defense Support Program (DSP) satellite at Aerojet Electrosystems in Azusa, California in the late seventies. The DSP satellites are geosynchronous spacecraft that are used to detect missile launches around the World: one of which was instrumental in targeting the Scud missiles in the the first Gulf War; allowing defensive missiles to neutralize the Scuds fired by Iraq. He put his ?€™Stamp-of-Approval?€™ (literally) on the circuit designs for the ?€?Above-the-Horizon?€? (ATH) and "Below-the-Horizon" (BTH) amplifiers that processed the signals from the thousands of sensors, as well as the approving the schematic circuit design of the complex circuit for the Analog-to-Digital Converter that converted the signals in one clock-cycle. He was also a member of the team who resolved issues which occurred in Incoming material for the program, and he issued reports to the customer regarding resolution of the issues. Aerojet and Bill were also involved in other Air Force, Army, Navy and commercial development programs.