
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 29, 1995                   TAG: 9511290083
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: PASADENA, CALIF.                                LENGTH: Short

SPACE EXPERT, EX-ROANOKER `EK' DAVIS DIES

Roanoke native Esker K. ``Ek'' Davis, manager of the Planetary and Space Physics Missions Program Office at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and an engineer for unmanned explorations of Mercury, Mars, Saturn and Venus, has died. He was 60.

Davis, who died of cancer Friday, had headed the program office since it was created during a 1994 reorganization, JPL said Tuesday.

He also headed the JPL Discovery Missions Office, in charge of 15 proposals made last year for low-cost unmanned missions starting in 1996. NASA most recently announced that the fourth Discovery mission will send a spacecraft to the comet Wild-2 and bring home samples of cometary dust.

Davis joined JPL in 1967 and held engineering and management positions in the Mariner Mars, Mariner Venus-Mercury and Voyager missions. He was Voyager project manager during the Voyager 2 encounter of Saturn in 1981.

- Associated Press

by CNB