Education
Doctor Doxsey was born in Schenectady, New York, raised in Cleveland Heights, Ohio and earned his Doctor of Philosophy in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Doctor Doxsey was born in Schenectady, New York, raised in Cleveland Heights, Ohio and earned his Doctor of Philosophy in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He joined the HST Project at National Aeronautics and Space Administration"s Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), located at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1981, and was head of the Hubble Missions Office at his death. Of Doxsey, STScI Director Matt Mountain said, "Rodger was the heart and soul of Hubble here at the Institute. He.. knew everything about the space telescope, from the smallest anomaly to the breadth of the extraordinary science delivered by the telescope he had worked with for over 28 years." After his doctorate, he worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the third National Aeronautics and Space Administration Small Astronomy Satellite (SAS 3), an X-ray astronomy mission, and then on the first High Energy Astronomy Observatory (Hoger Economisch en Administratief Onderwijs 1), which was launched in August 1977.
The Institute"s first director, Riccardo Giacconi, hired Doxsey nine years before the HST launch in 1990, to be the mission operations scientist
During the following years he was responsible for mission science specifications and requirements, data calibration, operational planning and scheduling, as well as the actual day-to-day commanding of the observatory. Doxsey worked on the development of new, state-of-the-art instruments for HST with National Aeronautics and Space Administration"s Goddard Space Flight Center, which contributed to the enormous advance made in Hubble"s scientific capabilities after launch, by replacing, in the course of several Space Shuttle visits from 1993 to May 2009, the original suite of instruments which had been specified and designed on the basis of technology that was many years old by the time HST finally became operational.
Doxsey was also responsible for hiring many of the STScI"s staff
Among Doxsey"s many awards and honors, especially notable are: 1991: Awarded the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest honor the Agency can give a nongovernmental employee. The citation noted his "exceptional accomplishments and contributions to the Hubble Space Telescope", and implementation of the systems needed to accomplish those ends. 2004: Awarded the American Astronomical Society"s George Van Biesbroeck Prize, citing Doctor Doxsey"s "outstanding, unselfish dedication" to making Hubble "one of the most scientifically productive telescopes of all time.".
