SPACE PIONEERS RECALL FIRST U.S. SATELLITE LAUNCH UPON 4OTH ANNIVERSARY
 
      Forty years ago this week, a team of scientists and engineers
 successfully launched Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite to orbit the
 Earth.  This historic accomplishment marked the nation's debut in the
 Cold War-era space race and  set the stage for the establishment of the
 civilian space agency that would become NASA.
 
      NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA, was still
 operated as a research laboratory for the U.S. Army when it was selected
 in November 1957 to develop the first U.S. satellite, including it's
 science package, its communications system, and the high-speed upper
 stages for the Army's Redstone rocket that would guide the tiny, 20-pound
 Explorer 1 into the great unknown.  JPL and the Army completed the
 assignment and successfully launched the satellite in less than 3 months.
 JPL and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, based in Huntsville, AL,
 joined in firing the satellite toward space from the missile test center
 at Cape Canaveral, FL, on Jan. 31, 1958.
 
      The scientific experiment onboard, a cosmic ray detector built by
 Dr. James Van Allen of the University of Iowa, soon returned one of the
 most important findings of the space program: the discovery of what are
 now known as the Van Allen Radiation Belts around the Earth.  Explorer
 1 went on to operate for three months.
 
      Following the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik on Oct. 4, 1957,
 "there was a lot of pressure to get a satellite in orbit as quickly as
 possible," said Dr. William Pickering, then JPL's director and the
 orchestrator of the Explorer 1 effort at JPL.
 
      The intensive effort was accomplished by a team of experts from 
 U.S. academia and the military, along with top World War II German
 rocket scientists such as Dr. Wernher von Braun, who emigrated to the
 United States in the post-war years to help lead the development of
 American rocket capabilities.  A globally linked telecommunications
 system developed by JPL tracked Explorer 1 and received its scientific
 data as it circled Earth.
 
    Amateur radio operators around the world were invited to listen
 in on Explorer 1's radio communications, including one key amateur 
 radio shack operated largely by JPL ham radio operators at the Los
 Angeles County Sheriff's substation in Temple City, near JPL.
 
      The most difficult technical challenge, said Pickering, "was 
 getting the three rocket stages to work consistently, to get it all
 to go in the right direction, with no guidance system." Considering
 the telecommunications and computing capability of the Explorer 1 
 era versus that available for last summer's Mars Pathfinder mission,
 Pickering said, "it's astonishing to think what has happened over 40
 years."
 
      Van Allen, still an active planetary and space physics researcher,
 recalled that, the morning after the historic Explorer 1 launch, "a
 big press conference had been called at the Great Hall of the National
 Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, and although it was 1:30 in the
 morning, there was still a huge crowd of reporters waiting around."
 
      Donna Shirley, Mars Exploration program manager at JPL, was in high
 school when the news hit that Explorer 1 had been launched.  "It was a
 terrific emotional moment," she recalled.  "It seemed like a scary thing
 that the Soviet Union was so powerful that they could launch Sputnik.
 When Explorer went up, it was, 'Rah, rah, our team!'" she said. "It seemed
 to be framed in 'us versus them' rather than focused on the real technical
 and scientific achievement. But the dawn of the Space Age affected my life
 a lot.
 
      "I don't think the 'right stuff' to work in the space program has 
 really changed all that much" since the days of Explorer 1, said Shirley.
 "You don't have cigar-smoking guys with slide rules anymore, but I think
 the 'right stuff' is still the same: dedication and competence."
 
      In late 1958, JPL was reassigned from the U.S. Army to NASA when the
 civilian space agency was created, and has helped lead the world's 
 exploration of space with robotic spacecraft since then. Operated as a
 division of the California Institute of Technology, JPL has sent space-
 craft to all of the known planets except Pluto, and this year will launch
 major astronomy and planetary exploration missions to comets, asteroids
 and Mars, along with many Earth-observing efforts.
 
      As the size of NASA's space missions takes advantage of miniaturized
 electronics to shrink to fit the new "faster, better, cheaper" mold, some
 complete space science instrument packages are about the size of that on
 tiny Explorer 1, Shirley said.
 
      "Miniaturization is allowing us to shrink down the brains of our
 spacecraft but still allow us to do more with them than we used to.  The
 challenge now is to shrink the rest of the spacecraft down."
 
      Considering the future of space science, Van Allen observed that
 "there is no shortage of great ideas on what we'd like to do.  'Faster,
 better, cheaper' is NASA's mantra, and the recent successful launch of
 the Lunar Prospector spacecraft is the best example of that.  But the
 Hubble Space Telescope is a good example of big projects that will
 continue to be conducted. I think we have a very bright future in 
 space science in all areas.  There is good public support," he said.
 "There is virtually no limit to what can be investigated in inter- 
 planetary science and astronomy."

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Editorial Note: Amateur (Ham) Radio Operators monitored the health and state of the EXPLORER-1 during the early phases of it's operation in 1958 and now, 40 years later and after quantum leaps in communications technology, Amateur Radio will again be present and represented by the Brevard (County) Emergency Amateur Radio Services, Inc. (BEARS) at this 40th Anniversary of the original launch. BEARS is staffed by dedicated volunteers, much as the AF Space and Missile Museum is, and will be communicating with fellow Amateur Radio Operators world-wide during the Saturday events. Visitors are welcome to board and visit the 22-foot BEARS Communications Van, a converted Motor Home used now as a mobile communications center during disasters or public safety incidents.