Dave Doody

Dave Doody came to Pasadena, California from Catalina Island off the coast, and started working with JPL's Deep Space Network in 1982. He then joined the flight team operating Voyager-1 and -2 in the outer solar system three years later. After then serving as a member of the Venus-mapping Magellan flight team, Dave joined the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan in 1994, three years before launch. He is currently the Flight Operations Lead Engineer for Cassini's Mission Support and Services Office. Dave is on the faculty of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, teaching a Public Programs evening course on the Basics of Interplanetary Flight. Prior to working on Catalina Island as a systems engineer (while living aboard a sailboat), commercial pilot Dave was an instructor with Japan Air Lines. Always eager to share the excitement of interplanetary exploration, Dave wrote and maintains the "Basics of Space Flight" tutorial website at JPL, www.jpl.nasa.gov/basics. A few times a year you might find him playing "sidewalk astronomer" in Old Town Pasadena, offering free views of planets to passers-by, despite the street lights.