Black space engineer, housing advocate Ken Kelly dies at 92
by Michael Warren, The Associated Press
Posted Mar 12, 2021 6:37 pm EDT
Last Updated Mar 12, 2021 at 6:44 pm EDT
Kenneth C. Kelly, a Black electronics engineer whose antenna designs contributed to the race to the moon, made satellite TV and radio possible and helped NASA communicate with Mars rovers and search for extraterrestrials, has died. The 92-year-old also worked to erase race barriers in the Navy, in California housing and on the newspaper comics pages.
Kelly had Parkinson’s disease before his death on Feb. 27, his son Ron Kelly said.
Kelly was awarded more than a dozen patents for innovations in radar and antenna technology, work that appears in peer-reviewed journals from 1955-1999. His early work at Hughes Aircraft helped create guided missile systems and the ground satellites that tracked the Apollo space missions, he said in an oral history recorded by his family.
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