Space Achievement Award Goes to Inertial Upper Stage Team

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (4/4/05) -- Aerospace and other Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) team members received the 2005 Space Foundation Space Achievement Award at the opening ceremony of the National Space Symposium held earlier this month in Colorado Springs, Colo.

The team of Aerospace, The Boeing Co., the U.S. Air Force, and NASA received the award for “distinguished performance of the IUS during its lifetime of success performing both national-security space and NASA missions.”

In a letter from Elliot Pulham, president and chief executive officer, Space Foundation, the IUS was praised for being “the little rocket that could,” and for “delivering DSP and TDRS satellites, and deep-space probes like Magellan and Galileo with unrivaled precision and performance.”

The IUS began development in 1976 and its final mission was completed in 2004.

The Space Achievement Award is presented annually in recognition of individuals or organizations that have demonstrated lifetime achievement, breakthrough space technology, or program or product success deemed to represent a critical milestone in the evolution of space exploration and development.
Also at the symposium, former Aerospace president and CEO Pete Aldridge received the Jimmie E. Hill Lifetime Space Achievement Award for more than four decades of service to national space and defense programs.

The Space Foundation, founded in 1983, is based in Colorado Springs, Colo.