Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 31, 1993 TAG: 9301310023
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. LENGTH: Medium
35 YEARS AGO, U.S. JOINED SPACE AGE
America's first satellite, a baby metal moon named Explorer 1, soared into orbit 35 years ago today and thrust the United States into the Space Age.Nearly 1,100 U.S. space launches have followed, 84 of them with humans on board. But for those who helped make history on Jan. 31, 1958, little Explorer 1 still is the most thrilling of all.
"There are several that stick out in my mind. That one certainly does. It was the first of a kind," said Bob Moser, who was launch test director for Explorer 1 and later served as test supervisor for the Apollo moon missions.
For University of Iowa physicist James A. Van Allen, the success of Explorer 1 was "exhilarating."
Van Allen's geiger counter on Explorer 1 led to his most notable discovery: bands of intense radiation surrounding Earth, much like huge doughnuts. The belts now bear his name.
"We had discovered a whole new phenomenon which had not been known or predicted before," Van Allen said. "We were really on top of the world, professionally speaking."
It was a humbling road to get there.
The Soviet Union beat the United States into space by four months with Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite. The 184-pound beeping ball was launched Oct. 4, 1957, and began the Space Age.
Sputnik 2 followed on Nov. 3, carrying the doomed dog Laika.
Desperate to get something, anything, into orbit, the United States turned to the new Vanguard rocket, a Naval Research Laboratory project. President Eisenhower insisted on the Vanguard rather than the proven Army Redstone missile because he wanted to emphasize peaceful uses of space. NASA had not yet been established.
The Free World saw its first attempted satellite launch on Dec. 6, 1957, from Cape Canaveral.
The flight lasted all of two seconds. After rising four feet, the 72-foot Vanguard fell back onto the pad, toppled over and exploded. The 3-pound aluminum ball that should have been sending radio signals from 300 miles up was beeping, pitifully, when it was found on the ground.
America's morale plummeted with the Vanguard.
"It was very depressing," recalled Vanguard launch director Bob Gray.
"You work on something for years and you bust yourself and all of a sudden you finally get to where you're going to go ahead and launch the thing. It looks like, `Boy, there she goes,' and you're totally depressed when you see what happens."
Gray was even more disappointed when the Army got the go-ahead to launch Explorer 1 using a modified Redstone, Jupiter-C.
The Jupiter-C and its 31-pound cylindrical payload were ready to go Jan. 29, 1958, but high winds kept the rocket grounded for two days. Finally, on Jan. 31 at 10:48 p.m., Jupiter-C roared away.
Everything worked.
Eisenhower interrupted a vacation to announce to the world: "The United States has successfully placed a scientific Earth satellite in orbit about the Earth."
Van Allen announced his discovery three months later.
By then, Explorer 1 had been joined in orbit by Explorer 3, which carried another Van Allen geiger counter. The second Explorer never made it to orbit because of a rocket malfunction.
By then, too, three more Vanguards had been launched, one of them successfully. It hoisted Vanguard 1, the second U.S. satellite and the world's fourth.
Vanguard 1 still orbits Earth.
The oldest human-made object in space has traveled more than 5.28 billion miles since it was launched March 17, 1958, the Naval Research Laboratory said. It's expected to remain aloft for another 300 years thanks to its size - a scant 3 1/4 pounds - and high orbit - 2,089 miles by 352 miles.
Vanguard 1's radio transmitter went dead in 1964.
Explorer 1 transmitted data until mid-1958 and plunged through the atmosphere in 1970.
Since the first Sputnik, 15,227 human-made objects have crashed through the atmosphere and burned up as a result of orbital decay, said the U.S. Space Command. That includes NASA's Skylab as well as rocket and satellite fragments, or space junk.
The United States had made 981 successful launches through the end of 1992, while Russia and the now-defunct Soviet Union posted 2,369, according to the TRW Space and Technology Group.