Sheldon Buck at Apollo Splashdown Party, December 1972

Sheldon W. Buck

Designer of the Traverse Gravimeter

Sheldon Buck graduated from MIT in 1958 with a degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics, having joined the Instrumentation Lab in 1957. At the tail end of the Apollo missions, Buck worked with the Earth and Planetary Science Department at MIT. He designed a number of things including seismic monitoring systems, gravimeters for lunar exploration, and instrumentation for oceanography. The Lunar Traverse Gravimeter experiment, which Buck served as Technical Director for beginning in 1970, flew on Apollo 17. Because of Buck's work much more is known about lunar geology than would have been without him.

Buck retired from Draper in 2000. He now serves as a mentor for MIT students in the Mission program.