The State of Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame recently inducted six individuals during a ceremony at the Bryant Conference Center in Tuscaloosa.

David Mobley, an Athens native, was among those inducted. Other 2020 inductees include Kenneth Kelly, Linda DuCharme, Jody Singer, Michael Johns and Sheila Cummings.

Mobley graduated from Auburn University in 1961 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and joined NASA as a test engineer working on Saturn rockets.

During his career with the space agency, he worked at Marshall Space Flight Center, Kennedy Space Center, Johnson Space Center and at the Thiokol plant facility in Utah.

Early in his career, Mobley worked on the Apollo Telescope Mount, a major component of the Skylab Project, and worked in Florida as part of the launch preparation team for Skylab. In 1976, he was part of a NASA technical support team sent to Holland to work with the European Space Agency. In 1984, he was named Spacelab chief engineer.

Among his lasting achievements are brokering a collaboration to birth the International Space Station, one of the greatest engineering feats in human history. He worked tirelessly with the Russians to involve them with the International Space Station, which also involved agencies from Japan and Europe. His interpersonal instincts were instrumental in forging a working relationship with Russian engineers, which set a precedent for future space partnerships with Russia. His efforts to get Russia onboard an American-led design were detailed in “Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir.”

His work on the space station led to him being chosen as NASA’s chief engineer, where he was the senior technical advisor to former NASA administrator Dan Goldin on all of the agency’s projects.

He retired from NASA in 1996 and became chief engineer for Boeing Space and Defense Group in Huntsville before being assigned as the U.S. Lab/Hab lead. He served as chief engineer for Microgravity on a Marshall project. After retiring as chief engineer for Microgravity, he remained active as an independent consultant, providing independent management and technical reviews and systems engineering support to NASA headquarters and on Marshall programs and projects. The most recent programs he supported include Gateway to the Moon, Lunar Lander, Habitat, Payloads and International Standards.

The State of Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame was chartered by the governor in 1987 to honor those individuals, corporations and projects associated with the state that have brought credit to the engineering profession. A total of 186 engineers, 44 projects and 32 firms have been recognized by the hall. These inductees span from border to border, across all industries and personify the impact engineering plays on the economy, quality of life and standard of living for the people of Alabama.