Story Posted on Jan 08, 2021 Space History Department Astronautical engineer and astronomer George Robert Carruthers, a name well-known and dearly regarded in the space science community, and a good friend of the National Air and Space Museum, passed away on Saturday, December 26 after a long illness. His fame derives in part from the fact that he developed and built a compact and powerful ultraviolet electronographic telescope, which became the first (and still the only) astronomical instrument sent to the Moon. It was placed on the lunar surface on Apollo 16 in 1972, and it performed extremely well, leading to enhanced knowledge of the Earth’s outermost atmosphere and of the vast spaces between the stars and galaxies invisible to the eye.