Press Release: NASA Award to ORA

ORA Receives NASA Public Service Group Achievement Award

Optical Research Associates (ORA®), Pasadena, CA, announced that they have received the prestigious NASA Public Service Group Achievement Award this year. The award was presented at a ceremony held at JPL on May 2, 1995, by Dr. Edward C. Stone, Director of JPL, and Dr. Jurgen Rahe, Director of Solar System Exploration Division, NASA Office of Space Science. The award, signed by NASA Administrator Dr. Daniel S. Goldin, is "in recognition of outstanding contributions in the area of optical design and engineering in support of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA's space exploration missions."

Together, NASA and JPL cited ORA for nearly 30 years of successful cooperation on numerous projects. Specifically, ORA was recognized for the critical role that their CODE V® optical design software and engineering services group played in the success of the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission. ORA's contribution to several other NASA projects was also acknowledged, including the Cassini spacecraft Narrow and Wide Field camera, television optics used for the Apollo-Soyuz linkup, and an objective used in the Skylab project.

Only six such awards were presented by NASA this year; the other five all went to groups at NASA facilities, making ORA the only independent company to be so honored. "NASA and JPL projects are some of the most technically demanding that we encounter, both for our software and engineering services," notes Robert Hilbert, President of ORA. "We're proud that they and their contractors have so often chosen ORA for their optical design needs, and honored and gratified to be recognized in this manner."

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