Wernher von Braun directed the German team that built the first modern rocket, the V-2, and was later the driving force behind US space launch vehicle design. He was born on March 23, 1912, in Wirsitz, Posen, Germany. He became fascinated with rockets and the prospect of space travel after reading Hermann Oberth's classic book on the subject 'The Rocket into Interplanetary Space' (1923). In 1932 he began working for the German army rocket research group. In 1934 the group carried out successful firings of their A-2 liquid-propellant rockets, burning ethanol (alcohol) and liquid oxygen, and were designing more powerful A-3 and A-4 rockets; the A-4 was intended as a weapon. Two years later the need for more spacious research and testing facilities and for security led the research group to transfer to the island of Peenemunde on the Baltic coast. It was there that the group, now headed by von Braun, developed the A-4, the first successful firing of which was in 1942. Two years later it was being used as a missile to bombard London. It had become Hitler's notorious 'revenge weapon', the V-2. At the end of the war von Braun and part of his group were taken, along with numerous V-2s, to White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico, in the USA. There they formed the nucleus of a team that used the V-2s as a springboard for the development of long- range ballistic missiles and the Jupiter C rocket that placed the first US satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit in January 1958. Von Braun and his team were by then based at the Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Alabama. In 1960 they were transferred from the army to the two-year old civilian space administration NASA. Their organization at Huntsville became the Marshall Space Flight Center, with von Braun as director. It was there that he and his team designed and developed the Saturn series of heavy launch vehicles, culminating in the mighty Saturn V Moon rocket. Von Braun remained at Marshall until 1970, when he was appointed NASA Deputy Associate Administrator responsible for advanced planning in Washington DC. He retired in 1976 and died on June 16 the following year.
