An engineer at New York’s Grumman Aircraft Corporation, Kelly led the design team for the “LEM”, the Lunar Excursion Module spacecraft that landed six Apollo teams on the moon and brought them back to rendezvous with the orbiting Command Module.
He was awarded the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Distinguished Public Service Medal in 1972 for his work, and retired in 1992. He died March 23 in New York from pulmonary fibrosis. He was 72.