Hi, AskHistorians I hope you can help me out with this. I have recently come into possession of some NASA photographs taken around the time of the Apollo missions. They include the crew of Apollo 11, photos from the Apollo 9 mission, and pictures of 3 individuals I can't identify. They appear to be receiving awards from a French agency judging by the awards in their hands as well as the sleeve the photos are in. The names on the awards appear to be (from left to right): D. Robert W. Rochelle, Herman E. (Lagone)?, (Samuel)? R. Stevens. Can anyone help to identify these individuals or what their role was with the Apollo program? Thanks!
First of all, the awards they're receiving are issued by the French National Center for Space Studies (CNES). The man on the left is getting a plain medal, center a vermeil medal (vermeil ranks in between silver and gold), and the one on the right is receiving a "diplome d'honneur", which I think is a pretty generic term, possibly corresponding most closely with a "certificate of appreciation".
But on to the identities of the men. Luckily, NASA keeps mission summaries online.
The France 1, a 1965 scientific spacecraft jointly funded by CNES and NASA, included a Dr. Robert W. Rochelle as project scientist and Samuel R. Stevens as project manager, both from NASA Goddard. Dr. Rochelle also had the same role on this cancelled NASA mission, but I can't tell you any more on him. Mr. Stevens was also project manager on another joint CNES-NASA mission, EOLE 1, a 1971 weather satellite.
The man in the middle is probably Herman E. Lagow, whose name appears on the NASA Vanguard 3, Explorer 7 and Explorer 17 missions. NASA elsewhere lists him as having an affiliation with UC Berkeley, but I can't find anything else on him. It seems most likely that they all served on either the FR-1 or EOLE 1, just not all in the top recorded roles.
