OBITUARY : Clayne Yeates; JPL Scientist on Galileo Project

Clayne Monson Yeates, a science and mission design manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who worked on the Galileo unmanned spacecraft project, has died at a Pasadena hospital. He was 55.

Yeates died April 18 of complications of a cerebral hemorrhage, said his wife, Laurie Yeates.

Born in Logan, Utah, he studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned a bachelor’s degree in science at Utah State University in Provo. He also earned a doctorate in physics in 1966 and a doctorate in plasma physics in 1968, both from Brigham Young University in Provo.

He began working at JPL in 1968, serving as the assistant project scientist on the Mariner Venus-Mercury project, an unmanned spacecraft that explored the two planets in the early 1970s.

In 1977, he was appointed science manager for Project Galileo, which in 1989 launched a $1.5-billion unmanned space vehicle to explore Jupiter. The spacecraft, which Yeates once described as “the Rolls-Royce of spacecraft,” is due to arrive at Jupiter to conduct scientific studies in 1995. Yeates worked on the Galileo project until the time of his death.

He is survived by his wife; three sons, Matthew of La Crescenta, Todd of Woodland Hills and Taylor of Glendale; two daughters, Jennifer Conte of Westlake Village and Brittany Dore of Glendale; his mother, Evalyn Yeates of Logan, Utah; three brothers, Owen of Redlands, and Lynn and Dennis, both of Salt Lake City; two sisters, Carole Maddux of Torrance and Sheryl Spreit of Smithfield, Utah, and four grandchildren.

The funeral was Wednesday. Donations can be made in Yeates’ name to the American Diabetes Assn.