The Galileo Memorial Scholarship was created to honor the NASA crew who perished aboard NASA 711, a highly modified Convair CV-990 Research Jet on April 12, 1973. The crew was composed of civil servants and contractor personnel at Ames. The aircraft had been used to chase a solar eclipse, study comets and Mars opposition, and study migratory sea mammals.
AIAA SF was instrumental in establishing the scholarship fund to benefit the children of those who perished aboard the Galileo. The scholarship program was co-managed with the Ames exchange. Over time, as the program accomplished it original purpose, it was extended to as a competitive scholarship to seek out graduating seniors of the highest calibre who intended to major in science and engineering.
In 2002, AIAA SF took over management of the scholarship program, including its remaining funds. Since AIAA SF acts as a trustee of the program on behalf of the Ames community, a policy document was drafted to govern the operation of the program.
The policy document is available as HTML, RTF, and Word document.
January 2006 - Revised list of counties in "Requirements for an Applicant" to conform to area specified in AIAA SF by-laws. (Dropped Sonoma, added Santa Cruz; oversight of original draft.) Added RTF and HTML as secondary formats. (By R. Kwan)
February 2002 - Final draft as MS Word document. (By S. Kurasaki with consensus of council)