He grew up on a farm, and came to love fixing tractors and keeping machinery in good running order. Now, space innovator Frank Cepollina is NASA’s much-awarded leader of the team responsible for missions that keep the giant Hubble Space Telescope in peak flying condition.

Cepollina will share his experiences and insights at 2 p.m. Oct. 9 in Room 1345 Engineering Building at Michigan State University. His lecture is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will follow. Reservations are suggested.

Cepollina is also known as the “father” of repairing and upgrading satellites orbiting far beyond the earth, designing the tools and technologies that enable astronauts to perform intricate tasks difficult to do even on the ground.

“We’re delighted to welcome Mr. Cepollina to campus,” said Douglas B. Roberts, director of MSU’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research hosting the special lecture. “He is truly a pioneer.”

Cepollina earned a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering at the University of Santa Clara. He joined the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Space Flight Center in 1963.

He specialized early in his career in designing satellites and spacecraft, honing the skills he would need later to design new power tools and interfaces leading up to the historic 1993 mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. He’s now deputy associate director for NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope Development Project.

He is a winner of the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal and the National Space Club Eagle Manned Mission Success Award, among others. His innovations are at work even beyond outer space. They are now utilized in specialized power tools and breast cancer detection. In 2003, Cepollina was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, an elite group of America’s most innovative individuals, including Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell and Henry Ford.

Hubble, named after the American astronomer Edwin Hubble, is considered the most powerful single eye on space ever built. The space shuttle Discovery carried Hubble into orbit in 1990. Since then, Hubble’s sophisticated optics and cameras have sent an array of breathtaking images of stars, planets and galaxies back to astronomers. Hubble has also yielded new discoveries into the universe’s age, vastness and rate of growth.

For reservations, photos and further details, go to: http://www.ippsr.msu.edu/Hubble/Cepollina.html

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Michigan State University has been advancing knowledge and transforming lives through innovative teaching, research and outreach for more than 150 years. MSU is known internationally as a major public university with global reach and extraordinary impact. Its 17 degree-granting colleges attract scholars worldwide who are interested in combining education with practical problem solving.