Robert Goddard

Location: Section 35

On March 16, 1926, twenty-five-year-old Worcester-born Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid- propellant rocket at his Aunt Effie's farm in nearby Auburn. Given the nickname 'Moony' because of his dreams of sending a rocket to the moon, Goddard was later described by NASA as "truly the American pioneer in space." In 1961, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, was dedicated "in tribute to the gentle rocket pioneer who pointed the way to the Space Age." Goddard's rockets are in the collections of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and his papers are at Clark University's Goddard Library.