Edition: U.S. / Global

Jurgen H. Rahe, 57, Space Program Head

Published: June 21, 1997

Dr. Jurgen H. Rahe, a senior manager at NASA, was killed on Wednesday when a tree fell onto his car while he was driving home in a heavy thunderstorm in Potomac, Md. He was 57 and lived in Potomac.

Dr. Rahe was the science program director for exploration of the solar system at the headquarters of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Washington. He was responsible for overseeing space exploration programs like the Galileo mission to Jupiter and the mission of the Mars Pathfinder, which is to land on Mars on July 4.

As a member of the advisory board, Dr. Rahe (pronounced RAH-he) was also responsible for the forthcoming Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and NASA's low-cost Discovery missions to the Moon and several planets.

He was an editor of Astrophysics and Space Science, a scientific journal, and was a member of the editorial board of two other publications.

Before joining NASA full time in 1989, Dr. Rahe was a staff member at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a NASA field installation in Pasadena, Calif. He also was a professor of astronomy and director at the Astronomical Institute of the University Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany.

He was born in Melle, Germany, earned the equivalent of a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in mathematics and physics, and received a doctorate in astronomy from the University of Hamburg.

He is survived by his wife, Hazel, and a daughter, Isabell, both of Potomac, and two brothers in Hamburg.