Norman Crabill

Norman Crabill (Engr ’58) was inducted into the Virginia Aviation Hall of Fame by the Virginia Aeronautical Historical Society in Richmond on Nov. 8, 2008. Mr. Crabill spent 37 years with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), serving as mission analysis and design manager for the Project Viking mission to Mars from 1968 to 1976 and for NASA’s Lunar Orbiter program, which found Apollo landing sites and mapped 99 percent of the lunar surface. He initiated the Digital Flight Recorder Program and, in the mid-1970s, designed the NASA Storm Hazards Program, which provided valuable data to the aircraft industry. Mr. Crabill worked for Martin Marietta as a contractor and then formed Aero Space Consultants in 1988. He holds two patents and developed the first weather-in-the-cockpit system using a satellite broadcast in the early 1990s, a system that is in widespread use and has had a major impact on the way general aviation pilots fly in weather. He continues to work as an independent consultant to VIGYAN, an aeronautical engineering firm in Hampton, Va.