Rotary Weekly Meeting
Tue, Sep 15
|Christ Church Sierra Madre
Join us for our presentation, "Out & About in the Solar System and Beyond", give by our speaker, JPL Navigation Engineer, Neil Mottinger.
Time & Location
Sep 15, 2026, 7:00 AM – 8:30 AM
Christ Church Sierra Madre, 170 W Sierra Madre Blvd, Sierra Madre, CA 91024, USA
About the event
No Host Breakfast: $10 (Please submit payments to Lynne Young, Treasurer)
This event is OPEN TO THE PUBLIC - please RSVP to sierramadrerotaryclub@gmail.com
Neil grew up on a small family farm near Joliet, Illinois. A look through a neighbor’s homemade telescope during high school sparked a lifelong interest in space and led him to JPL in 1967, where he helped improve the accuracy of deep-space navigation. Over his distinguished career, he supported numerous U.S. and international missions to the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and beyond—including Apollo 8, Viking, Curiosity, Perseverance, India’s 2023 lunar south-pole landing, Psyche, and Europa Clipper.
Neil earned a degree in astronomy, with minors in mathematics and physics, from the University of Illinois in 1966, followed by a master’s degree in systems analysis from West Coast University in 1971. He and his wife, Debbie, live in La Crescenta. A longtime member of La…