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Science / Space Race

[February 18, 1965] OSO Exciting!  (February 1965 Space Roundup)

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by Gideon Marcus

Remember the early days of the Space Race, when launches came about once a month, and there was plenty of time to ruminate over the significance of each one?

Those days are long past, my friends.  Like every other aspect of this crazy modern world we live in, the pace of space missions is only accelerating.  Just look at this grab bag of space headlines, any one of which might have been front page news just a few years ago:

Staring at the Sun

Three years ago, NASA launched the first of its "Observatory Class" satellites, the 200 kg Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO).  Its mission was unprecedented: to get the first long-term observations of the Sun in all of the frequencies of the electro-magnetic spectrum, not just the narrow windows visible from the Earth's surface.

For two years, OSO gazed at the Sun with its thirteen instruments, dutifully reporting its findings to the ground.  The observatory revolutionized our understanding of our neighborhood star, particularly in finding the correlation between solar flares and the little microflares that precede them. 

OSO 1 went silent last May.  Like nature, NASA abhors a vacuum — at least one without satellites floating through it!  So on February 3, 1965, OSO 2 sailed into orbit to pick up where its predecessor had left off.

The new observatory only has eight instruments, but given that the weight of the craft is similar to that of OSO 1, I have to believe the new load-out is intentional.  Moreover, OSO 2 has some neat developments.  Its Ultraviolet spectrometer, Solar x-ray and UV telescope, and White-light coronagraph are all mounted on the "sail" of the spacecraft, and they can scan the disk of the sun from end to end, like a TV camera.  That should allow for more precision in the measurements.

Also, OSO 2 has a digital telemetry system rather than the analog FM system of OSO 1.  Digital systems are far less prone to error, and more information can be sent over any given length of time.  The new system can dump 3 million bits of data in just 5.5 minutes.

Finally, OSO 2 is smarter — it can accept some 70 commands from the ground instead of just 8.  Just what NASA scientists do with those commands, I don't know.  Maybe OSO brews great coffee.

The most important thing about OSO 2 is the timing of its launch.  Every 11 years, the Sun completes an output cycle, warbling from active to inactive status.  1965 is the Solar minimum, and this year marks a concerted international effort to watch the Sun from many different vantage points to take advantage of the opportunity.

You can bet OSO 2 will have some interesting data for us come 1966!

Requiem for a Vanguard

Hands over hearts, folks.  On February 12, NASA announced that Vanguard 1 had gone silent, and the agency was finally turning off its 108 Mhz ground transceivers, set up during the International Geophysical Year.  The grapefruit-sized satellite, launched March 17, 1958, was the fourth satellite to be orbited.  It had been designed as a minimum space probe and, had its rocket worked in December 1957, would have been America's first satellite rather than its second.  Nevertheless, rugged little Vanguard 1 beat all of its successors for lifespan.  Sputniks and Explorers came and went.  Vanguards 2 and 3 shut off long ago.  Yet the grapefruit that the Naval Research Laboratory made kept going beep-beep, helping scientists on the ground measure the shape of the Earth from the wiggle and decay of Vanguard's orbit.

The satellite's cry had slowly become weaker as its solar cell-charged batteries failed.  Finally, some time last year, Vanguard could be heard no more, though NASA kept listening for several more months.  It's not all sad news, however: Vanguard 1 will remain in orbit for hundreds of years more, and it can still be optically tracked.  That means it still has a long, useful life ahead of it, even now that it is mute.

Whole World in its Eyes

Here's a little TIROS tidbit.  Remember TIROS 9?  The first weather satellite launched into a polar orbit so it can see the whole Earth once a day as the planet rotates underneath?

We now have the very first picture of the world's weather.  It won't be the last:

The joys of being regular

There was a time when space was a hit-and-miss affair.  Seemed every time I opened the paper, there was news of yet another rocket blowing up.  These days, we can practically take success for granted.  Ranger 7 broke a six mission losing streak, the first two Gemini launches went swimmingly, TIROS has gone nine for nine.

Similarly, the Saturn 1 rocket, the biggest booster ever made, has had an impeccable launch record.  The lift-off on February 16 kept the streak going; the eight engine monstrosity delivered what I believe is the biggest satellite ever to be put into orbit.

Called Pegasus, it is an enormous cylinder with giant panels affixed to either side.  The panels occupy some 2300 square feet, and their job is to measure the density of micrometeoroids in orbit over the course of a many-year lifespan.

It sounds pretty mundane when you reduce the mission to its bare essentials.  Pegasus is like a big fly-catcher, spending its orbit running into space rocks.  But it's not the experiment that's so exciting, but the idea that we can now loft giant structures with a single launch.  Imagine that Pegasus was actually a space station module, and that it's wings were solar panels.  Now imagine assembling a few of them together using a maneuverable spacecraft, perhaps a Gemini derivative…

Yes, America is just on the edge of being in the space construction business.

Scenes to Come

Yesterday (February 17, 1965), the eighth Ranger blasted off from Cape Kennedy, destination: Moon.  If we've truly reached an era of reliability, we can expect the craft to hit its target on the morning of the 20th.  Stay tuned — you'll read about it here first!




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Science / Space Race

[March 24, 1963] Bumper Crop (A bounty of exciting space results)

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by Gideon Marcus

February and March have been virtually barren of space shots, and if Gordo Cooper's Mercury flight gets postponed into May, April will be more of the same.  It's a terrible week to be a reporter on the space beat, right?

Wrong!

I've said it before and I'll say it again.  Rocket launches may make for good television, what with the fire, the smoke, and the stately ascent of an overgrown pencil into orbit…but the real excitement lies in the scientific results.  And this month has seen a tremendous harvest, expanding our knowledge of the heavens to new (pardon the pun) heights.  Enjoy this suite of stories, and tell me if I'm not right…

How hot is it?

Mariner 2 went silent more than two months ago, but scientists are still poring over the literal reams of data returned since its rendezvous with Venus.  The first interplanetary mission was a tremendous success, revealing a great deal about the Planet of Love, whose secrets were heretofore protected by distance and a shroud of clouds. 

Here's the biggie: Preliminary reports suggested that the surface temperature of "Earth's Twin" is more than 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  It turns out that was a conservative estimate.  In fact, the rocky, dry landscape of Venus swelters at 800 degrees — possibly even hotter than the day side of sun-baked first planet, Mercury.  It's because the planet's dense carbon dioxide atmosphere acts like a heat blanket.  There's no respite on the night side of the hot world either; the thick air spreads the temperatures out evenly.

Thus, virtually every story written about Venus has been rendered obsolete.  Will Mariner 3 destroy our conception of Mars, too?

Just checking the lights

On February 25, the Department of Defense turned little Solrad 1 back on after 22 months of being off-line.  The probe had been launched in conjunction with a navigation satellite, Transit, back in June 1960.  For weeks, it had provided our first measurements of the sun's X-ray output (energy in that wavelength being blocked by the Earth's atmosphere and, thus, undetectable from the ground).  DoD has given no explanation for why the probe has been reactivated, or why it was turned off in the first place.  Maybe there's a classified payload involved?

Radio News from the Great White Spacecraft

Last September, the Canadians launched their first satellite — the "top-sounder," Alouette, whose mission was to measure the radio-reflective regions of our atmosphere from above.  The results are in, and to any HAM or communications buff, its huge news.

It turns out that the boundaries of the ionosphere are rougher at higher latitudes than at lower latitudes.  Moreover, Alouette has determined that the Van Allen Belts, great girdles of radiation around our planet, dip closer to the Earth at higher latitudes.  This heats up the ionosphere and causes the roughness-causing instability. — the more active the electrons, the poorer the radio reflection.  Now we finally know why radio communication is less reliable way up north.  The next step will be learning how to compensate for this phenomenon so that communication, both civil and military, can be made more reliable.

Sun Stroke Warning

After a year in orbit, NASA's Orbiting Solar Observatory is still going strong, with 11 of 13 experiments still functioning.  The satellite has probably returned more scientifically useful data than all of the ground-based solar observatories to date (certainly in the UV and X Ray spectra, which is blocked by the atmosphere).

Moreover, OSO 1 has returned a startling result.  It turns out that solar flares, giant bursts of energy that affect the Earth's magnetic field, causing radio storms and aurorae, are preceded by little microflares.  The sequence and pattern of these precursors may be predictable, in which case, OSO will give excellent advance warning of these distruptive events.

Tax money at work, indeed!

Galaxy, Galaxy, Burning Bright

In the late 1950s, astronomers began discovering some of the brightest objects in the universe.  It wasn't their visible twinkle that impressed so much as their tremendous radio outbursts.  What could these mysterious "quasi-stellar sources" be?

Now we have a pretty good guess, thanks to a recent scientific paper.  Cal Tech observers using the Mt. Wilson and Mt. Palomar observatories turned their gaze to object 3C 273, a thirtheenth magnitude object in the constellation of Virgo.  It turns out that 3C 273's spectrum exhibits a tremendous "red shift," that is to say, all of the light coming from it has wavelengths stretched beyond what one would expect.  This is similar to the decrease in pitch of a railroad whistle as the engine zooms away from a listener.

The only way an object could have such a redshift is if it were of galactic proportions and receding from us at nearly 50,000 km/sec.  This would place it almost 200,000,000 light years away, making it one of the most distant (and therefore, oldest) objects ever identified.

At some point, astronomer Hubble's contention that the universe is expanding is likely to be confirmed.  These quasi-stellar objects ("quasars"?) therefore represent signposts from a very young, very tiny universe.  What exciting times we live in!

Five years of Beep, Beep

St. Patricks Day, 1958 — Vanguard 1 was the fourth satellite in orbit, but it was the first civilian satellite, and it is the oldest one to remain up there.  In fact, it is the only one of the 24 probes launched in the 1950s that still works.

What has a grapefruit-sized metal ball equipped with a radio beacon done for us?  Well, plenty, actually.  Because it has been tracked in orbit so long, not only have we learned quite a bit about the shape of the Earth (the variations in Vanguard's orbit are due to varying gravities on the Earth, the measurement of which is called "geodetics"), but the satellite's slow decay also tells us a lot about the density of the atmosphere several hundred miles up.

So, while Sputnik and Explorer might have had the first laughs, Vanguard looks likely to have the last for a good long time.

Telstar's little brother does us proud

RCA's Relay 1, launched in December, is America's second commercial communications satellite.  It ran into trouble immediately upon launch, its batteries producing too little current to operate its transmitter.  Turns out it was a faulty regulator on one of the transponders; the bright engineers switched to the back-up (this is why you carry a spare!), and Relay was broadcasting programs across the Atlantic by January.  660 orbits into its mission and 500 beamed programs later, NASA announces that Relay has completed all tests. 

Nevertheless, why abandon a perfectly good orbital TV station?  Relay will continue to be used to transmit shows transcontinentally, especially now that Telstar has finally gone silent (February 21).  There is even talk that Relay could broadcast the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, if it lasts that long!

In a sea of Blue, a drop of Red

On March 12, 3-12 at the Spring Recognition Dinner of Miracle Mile Association, in Los Angeles, Cal Tech President, Lee DuBridge, noted that the United States has put 118 probes into space, while the Russians have only lofted 34 (that we know of).  He also pointed out that virtually no scientific papers have resulted from the Soviets' "science satellites." 

As if in reply, on March 21 the Soviets finally, after 89 days without a space shot, launched Kosmos 13.  (To be fair, it's been kind of quiet on the American side, too).  The probe was described as designed to "continue outer space research."  No description of payload nor weight specifications were given.  Its orbit is one that allows it to cover much of the world.  While it may be that some of the Kosmos series are truly scientific probes, you can bet that, like America's Discoverer program, the Kosmos label is a blind to cover the Russians' use of spy satellites.  Oh well.  Turnabout is fair play, right?

[Next up, don't miss Mark Yon's spotlight of this month's New Worlds!  And if I saw you at Wondercon, do drop me a line…]

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Science / Space Race

[June 30, 1961] Reaping the Harvest (June 1961 space science results)

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June was a busy month for space travel buffs, especially those who live in the Free World.  Here's an omnibus edition covering all of the missions I caught wind of in the papers or the magazines:

Little lost probe

The Goddess of Love gets to keep her secrets…for now.  The first probe aimed at another planet, the Soviet "Venera," flew past Venus on May 19.  Unfortunately, the spacecraft developed laryngitis soon after launch and even the Big Ear at Jodrell Bank, England, was unable to clearly hear its signal.

The next favorable launch opportunity (which depends on the relative positions of Earth and Venus) will occur next summer.  Expect both American and Soviet probes to launch then.

X Marks the Spot

Just as planes use fixed radio beacons to determine their position, soon submarines (and people!) will be able to calculate where they are by listening to the doppler whines of whizzing satellites.  Transit 4A, launched by the Navy, joined the still-functioning Transit 2 on June 29 (#3 conked out March 30, and #1's been off the air since last July). 

This Transit has an all-new power source.  Instead of batteries or solar panels, it gets its juice from little nuclear reactors.  These aren't aren't like the big fission plants you see being established all over the country.  Rather, they are powered by the heat of radioactive decay.  These energy packs are small and much simpler than solar panels.  Expect to see them used quite a bit on military satellites.

The Navy gets extra points for making their rocket do triple-duty: Also boosted into orbit were Injun 1 and Solrad 3.  The first is another University of Iowa particle experiment from the folks who discovered the Van Allen Belt; the latter a solar x-ray observatory.

Along a dusty trail

Contrary to popular belief, outer space is not empty.  There are energetic particles, clouds of dust, and little chunks of high-speed matter called micrometeorites.  All of them pose hazards to orbital travel.  Moreover, they offer clues as to the make-up and workings of the solar system. 

Prior satellites have tried to measure just how much dirt swirls around in orbit, but the results have been vague.  For instance, Explorer 8 ran into high-speed clouds of micrometeorites zooming near the Earth late last year corresponding with the annual Leonids meteor shower.  Vanguard 3 encountered the same cloud in '59, around the same time.  But neither could tell you precisely how many rocks they ran into; nor could previous probes.

NASA's new "S(atellite)-55" is the first probe dedicated to the investigation of micrometeorites.  It carries five different experiments — a grid of wires to detect when rocks caused short circuits, a battery of gas cells that would depressurize when impacted, acoustic sounding boards…the whole megillah.  It is one of those missions whose purpose is completely clear, accessible to the layman, unarguably useful.

Sadly, the first S-55, launched today from Wallops island, failed to achieve orbit when the third stage of its Scout rocket failed to ignite. 

It's a shame, but not a particularly noteworthy one.  The Scout is a brand new rocket.  We can expect teething troubles.  Every failure is instructive, and I'll put good money on the next S-55, scheduled for launch in August.

Worth the Wait

Speaking of Explorer 8, Aviation Week and Space Technology just reported the latest findings from that satellite.  Now, you may be wondering how a probe that went off the air last December could still generate scientific results.  You have to understand that a satellite starts returning data almost immediately, but analysis can take years. 

I'd argue that the papers that get published after a mission are far more exciting than the fiery blast of a rocket.  Your mileage may vary.  In any event, here's what the eighth Explorer has taught us thus far (and NASA says it'll be another six months until we process all the information it's sent!):

1) The ionized clouds that surround a metal satellite as it zooms through orbit effectively double the electrical size of the vehicle.  This makes satellites bigger radar targets (and presumably increases drag).

2) We now know what causes radio blackouts: it is sunspot influence on the lower ionosphere. Solar storms create turbulence that can cut reception.

3) The most common charged element in the ionosphere is oxygen.

4) The temperature of the electrons Explorer ran into was about the same as uncharged ionospheric gas – a whopping 1800 degrees Kelvin.

This may all seem like pretty arcane information, but it tells us not just about conditions above the Earth, but the fundamental behavior of magnetic fields and charged particles on a large scale.  Orbiting a satellite is like renting the biggest laboratory in the universe, creating the opportunity to dramatically expand our knowledge of science.

Air Force discovers Pacific Ocean

The 25th Discoverer satellite, a two-part vehicle designed to return a 300 pound capsule from orbit, was successfully launched June 16.  Its payload was fished from the Pacific Ocean two days later, the recovery plane having failed to catch it in mid-descent.  I recently got to see one of those odd-tailed Fairchild C-119 aircraft that fly those recovery missions; they're bizarre little planes, for sure. 

As for the contents of the space capsules, it's generally assumed that they carry snapshots of the Soviet Union taken from orbit.  This time around, however, the flyboys included some interesting experiments: three geiger tubes, some micrometeroid detectors, and a myriad of rare and common metals (presumably to see the effects of radiation upon them). 

You may be wondering what happened to Discoverers 23 and 24 (the last Discoverer on which I've reported was numbered 22).  The former, launched on April 8, never dropped its capsule; the latter failed to reach orbit on June 8.  Unlike NASA, the Air Force gives numbers to its failed missions.

Next Mercury shots planned

Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom is set to be the next Mercury astronaut in late July.  His flight will be a duplicate of Alan Shepard's 15 minute jaunt last month.  If all goes well, astronaut John Glenn will fly a similar mission in September.

I don't think the Atlas is going to be ready in time this year for an orbital shot.  That means there will be several tense months during which the Soviets could upstage us with yet another spectacle. 

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Science / Space Race

[Dec. 12, 1959] Beeping its last (The end of Vanguard 3)

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Two days ago, there were three active satellites—two Vanguards and one Explorer.

Yesterday, there were two: Vanguard 3 has gasped its last beep.

For 84 days, the last of the Vanguards circled the Earth, returning data from its solar X-Ray detectors, its magnetometer, and its micrometeoroid sensors from an orbit higher than that of its dumber, smaller older brother, Vanguard 1.

Did you know that the Sun emits X-Rays?  That's what happens when you heat gasses to millions of degrees Kelvin; such temperatures are common in the solar corona, the bright fringe of gas surrounding the sun's disk that one can see during a solar eclipse.  The atmosphere absorbs most extraterrestrial X-Rays, so a satellite is needed to gather comprehensive data.  Sadly, all of the energetic particles trapped in the Earth's Van Allen Belts swamped Vanguard 3's detectors, and no useful data were obtained. 

On the other hand, Vanguard 3's magnetometer did a heck of a job, returning more than 4000 signals, nearly 3000 of which were of high quality.  We have never had such a comprehensive map of our planet's magnetic fields, and it is likely that scientists will be studying these results for years to come, learning how these fields interact with the solar wind to cause phenomena from radio storms to aurorae.

Speaking of radio, if you've ever listened to your shortwave, you might have heard "Whistlers"–those enigmatic sound that calls to mind a skyrocket flying overhead or birds chirping or even a flying saucer.  Such signals have been heard since radios were invented, and it is now known that they are emitted by lightning and propagated in the ionosphere.  Vanguard 3 was able to "tune in" to Whistler emissions with its magnetometer, which allowed scientists to make some estimates of the density of electrons in the ionosphere.  Two for one is a good deal!

No micrometeoroids pierced Vanguard 3's hull for the duration of its mission, but that doesn't mean the satellite didn't run into its share of space junk.  The first preliminary estimates from returned data suggest that 10,000 tons of space dust crash into the Earth's atmosphere every day.  That sounds like a lot, but considering that it is spread out over the entire surface area of the planet, it's a negligible concern to a small satellite.

With the silence of Vanguard 3, the Vanguard program has come to a virtual end (though Vanguard 1 still keeps beeping away).  Three successful launches out of eleven seems like a pretty lousy record.  Consider this legacy, however: the bonanza of returned data, the comparative inexpensiveness of the program, the first stage being turned into the Vega second stage booster for other rockets, the second and third stages being used on the Atlas Able and the Thor Able rockets, the Vanguard worldwide signal receiving station pioneering space communications.  Vanguard surely must count as a raging success.  Moreover, Vanguard set an important precedent by showing that rockets can be used for purely civilian purposes as well as for sending weapons of mass destruction across the globe.

If my epitaph is half as laudatory, I shall be a very happy corpse.

Up next—The Twilight Zone and then… Astounding!

Note: I love comments (you can do so anonymously), and I always try to reply.

P.S. Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!



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Science / Space Race

[Sep. 19, 1959] Anchors Aweigh! (The Navy's Transit and Vanguard launches)

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A bit of a stop press on the Space Race as I wade through this months Astounding, which I unwisely saved for last.  You should never eat dessert first…

Have you ever noticed how a train’s whistle seems to rise in pitch as the locomotive approaches and then the pitch lowers as the train departs?  This is caused by the compression of sound waves as they whistle heads toward your ears followed by a decompression as it heads away.  It’s called the Doppler Effect (after the 19th century Austrian scientist, Christian Doppler).

This concept will be used by satellites to provide accurate navigation aids for American military craft and, someday, civilians as well.  The idea is that the satellites, called Transit, will broadcast at a fixed frequency.  A receiver on the ground can tell from the quality of the Doppler frequency shifts, knowing the satellite’s orbit, where it is to within a small degree of error.  Very simple in concept.

Sadly, Transit 1 failed to orbit the day-before-yesterday when its Thor Able booster malfunctioned after liftoff.  On the other hand, the Navy (the service that developed the satellite) did get some useful data from the sub-orbital flight, I’m told.

Speaking of the Navy, the final flight of the Navy/civilian Vanguard program ended in success yesterday with the orbiting of Vanguard 3.  It is another x-ray, magnetosphere, and micrometeoroid detecting probe along the lines of the Explorers.  Its long-lasting orbit and conical shape will also allow the satellite to be used to determine the density of the upper atmosphere for decades to come.

I’ll publish more on the scientific findings of this probe as I hear them.  We are beyond the days where just getting the things up is the whole story.

And with that, the Vanguard program comes to an end with three successful flights out of 11.  This may sound like a poor record, particularly given the rather vicious coverage given the program by both domestic and foreign media (remember “Flopnik”?)

But Vanguard has enabled the reaping of a tremendous harvest.  As a booster, it was remarkably efficient and cheap.  The reliable second and third stages have been adopted as supplemental stages on other rockets, and it looks like the first stage will be turned into NASA’s new Vega second-stage system.  Thanks to Vanguard, there will be American property in space for the next several hundred years. 

Most importantly, Vanguard paved the way for a truly civilian space program.  Though it was derived from a Navy proposal, and spin-off technology from the program is being used by the military, the idea of a purely scientific and non-military space endeavor is a powerful and important one.  Our new space agency, NASA, owes much to it.

—

P.S. Galactic Journey is now a proud member of a constellation of interesting columns.  While you're waiting for me to publish my next article, why not give one of them a read!

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Science / Space Race

Two for two (Vanguard and Discoverer failures; 6-26-1959)

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It's another Space Race update from The Traveler!

A Vanguard went up on the 22nd, but I decided to hold off on writing a column as I knew a Discoverer was set to launch on the 25th.  I'm afraid I've got a double-whammy of disappointment for my good readers.

This new Vanguard had two thermistors (heat-activated electrodes) adorning the magneisum-alloy skin of the 20" diameter sphere, one facing the sun, one facing inward.  The point of this experiment was to measure the heat balance of the sun's radiation on the Earth.  Why is this important?  The primary engine for the Earth's weather is the sun's heating of the atmosphere.  Hot air rises, cold air sinks, and the spinning Earth mixes all of this thoroughly and chaotically.  If we knew how strong the sun's rays were at various latitudes, we could correlate these findings to heat flow in the lower atmosphere and learn a great deal.


NASA photo–I don't know who those folk are.

The rocket soared out of sight of observers, seemingly on a flawless trajectory.  However, it appears that one of the second-stage pressure valves was faulty; no signal from the satellite was ever caught on the ground by any of the many Minitrack receiving stations around the globe.

The sad news is that there is only one booster left to the Vanguard program.  After the next shot, it's all over.  I hope these experiments don't get abandoned!


From a postcard I picked up this week–wishful thinking, as it turned out.

Discoverer 4 took off yesterday, and it seemed to be a good launch, but then the second stage (the "Hustler") failed, and the payload never reached orbit.  From the press releases, the Air Force was testing a new capsule designed to carry monkeys.  Given that there were no actual passengers on the mission, I can think of two possibilities:

1) The Air Force doesn't want to actually send up any more animals lest the critter-lovers of the world let out a cry and hue (bigger than they already have), at least until the flyboys have perfected their rockets, or

2) There was a payload on Discoverer 4 equipped with eyes, but it wasn't an animate one.

Which one do you think is more plausible?

—

In other news, my F&SF and Astounding magazines have come in for this month, and I picked up last month's IF as well.  I'm also reading Sam Merwin's Well of Many Worlds, one of the first "sideways in time" stories.  So expect a lot of fiction reviews in the near future!



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Science / Space Race

Vanguard does it again! (Vanguard II; 2-18-1959)

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At long last, the Vanguard team has launched the satellite it had always wanted to.  Vanguard II soared into orbit atop its 3-stage launcher yesterday joining four other satellites (three American, one Soviet) around the Earth.  It is expected to orbit for the next 300 years.

The Navy and NASA have been trying for almost a year to duplicate their first success back in May 1958.  Vanguard I was ridiculed by Soviet Premier Khruschev as a "grapefruit."  Truth to tell, he wasn't far off.  The first Vanguard did little more than duplicate the work of Sputnik I.  On the other hand, the Vanguard project also entailed the building of Earth's first world-wide satellite tracking system as well as the development of the first purpose-built civilian booster.

Well, that booster finally got some good use this year.  Vanguard II is much bigger (beachball-sized) than its ancestor.  Moreover, the new satellite has been touted as the first "eye in the sky."  There are two photocells located at the tip of two optical telescopes mounted inside the probe.  Their mission for the next two weeks (the lifespan of their batteries) will be to detect reflections off of clouds in the Northern Hemisphere. 

If that doesn't sound exciting to you, how about if I tell you that this is the first step toward bonafide weather satellites?  Within a couple of years, we will have automated orbital observatories with a clear view of much of the globe at any given time.  They'll be able to spot hurricanes, cold fronts, jet streams.. you name it.  After a few years, they will accumulate enough data to revolutionize our climatology models and maybe even lead to large-scale weather control.  Aside from communications (pioneered in December with the launch of Project SCORE), weather is the prime commercial use for satellites.

Even more nifty is the tape recorder set-up they've got in Vanguard.  This allows the satellite to collect and store data for later transmission down to Earth.  As Space Age as this sounds, rumor has it that this sophisticated system is about to be superseded by an all new, digital development.  That will be an exciting story to break, when I can.

Another interesting tidbit, to me, is how the Vanguard team chose to moderate the temperature onboard the satellite.  There is no air in space, so all heat is received and transmitted away by radiation, and not by the more-efficient methods of conduction and convection, as on Earth.  Translation: it's hot in the sun and cold in the shadow, and there is no moderation by a surrounding medium.  It is important that the satellite not absorb too much heat or too little.  On the Pioneers, at least the first three, they had an alternating black and white paint scheme to address this problem. 

Vanguard, on the other hand, is coated with powdered silicon monooxide as insulation underneath the shiny aluminum picked for maximum visibility.  Inside, the satellite is gold-plated!  I assume this is to conduct heat to the silicon monoxide shell.  I wonder how much that cost. 

The only disappointment is that Vanguard II is tumbling as it spins like a wobbly top.  This is going to make interpreting the photoscanner data a challenge.  Still, it's an exciting first step.  The next few years are going to be incredible.

Back to fiction in two days.  Thanks for all the well-wishes!



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