Richard Schwartz (engineer)

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Richard Schwartz is an American aerospace engineer who helped develop GPS satellites. Born in New York City, he studied mechanical engineering at Cooper Union (1957) and earned an MBA from Pepperdine University (1972). He began his career at Rocketdyne, then part of North American Aviation and later Rockwell International, where he worked on rocket propulsion and the Space Shuttle program and led GPS satellite efforts as Rockwell’s GPS Satellite Program Manager, helping deliver the first GPS satellites (Block I). He became President of Rocketdyne in 1983, then led Hercules Aerospace (1989) and Alliant Techsystems (1995–1999). Schwartz received a NASA Public Service Award (1972) and was inducted into the Space Foundation’s Space Technology Hall of Fame (1998) for his GPS work. In 2019, he shared the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering for developing GPS satellites that endure radiation and last a long time, along with Hugo Fruehauf, Bradford Parkinson, and James Spilker Jr. He is married to Ardath Marie Schwartz.