Tecwyn Roberts

Tecwyn Roberts
Tecwyn Roberts c.1974
Born	(1925-10-10)10 October 1925 Llanddaniel Fab, Anglesey, Wales
Died	27 December 1988(1988-12-27) (aged 63) Crownsville, Maryland, USA
Occupation	aerospace engineer
Spouse(s)	Doris Sprake
Children	Michael Roberts

Tecwyn Roberts (10 October 1925 – 27 December 1988) was a Welsh-born American spaceflight engineer who in the 1960s played important roles in designing the Mission Control Center at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas and creating NASA’s worldwide tracking and communications network.

Roberts served as NASA’s first Flight Dynamics Officer with Project Mercury that put the first American into space. He later joined NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center where he served as Director and Manager of the Goddard Space Flight Center’s global tracking and communications system supporting NASA's manned and unmanned low earth orbiting flight programs.

Roberts, alternately nicknamed "Tec" and "Tex", was born 10 October 1925 at Trefnant Bach cottage in Llanddaniel Fab, Anglesey, Wales. He received his early education at Ysgol Parc y Bont, the small local primary school there. He left the school in 1938 after a successful Scholarship Examination and continued his studies at the Beaumaris Grammar School, from which he graduated in 1942. After leaving Beaumaris Grammar School, he began an engineering apprenticeship with the aero- and marine-engineering company Saunders-Roe at Fryars Bay, Llanfaes, Anglesey, some eight miles from Llanddaniel Fab.

After serving briefly in the Royal Air Force (RAF), Roberts was released in 1944 and resumed work with Saunders-Roe at their Southampton works, from where he was transferred to the Isle of Wight in 1946. At that time, he also attended the University of Southampton where he obtained a degree in Aeronautical Engineering in 1948 and was awarded the Institute of Mechanical Engineers Special Award. Whilst working for Saunders-Roe on the Isle of Wight, Roberts met Doris Sprake whom he later married.