 In 1959 and 1960, he worked at the Langley Space Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.and later at NASA headquarters in Washington D.C.

As a space scientist, he helped organize the Mercury and Gemini manned space flight programs in the late 1950s and 1960s.In the position of Project Director he headed the Apollo Lunar Landing Program producing the initial studies of the Apollo program, which resulted in the first manned lunar landing in 1969.