James Van Allen, 1914-2006
In the annals of rocket science, there are few names that loom larger than James Van Allen.
Van Allen, who came to national prominence with the launch of the first U.S. satellite Explorer 1 in 1958 and who "made the first major discovery of the early space age," died yesterday in Iowa City, Iowa at the age of 91.
A geiger counter developed by Van Allen was attached to Explorer 1, and data sent back by the counters indicated the existence of two belts of charged particles trapped by Earth’s magnetic field — which became known as the Van Allen Belts.
The Telegraph has more on this remarkable man:
The Van Allen belts were discovered by instruments designed by him and carried into space by Explorer I, America’s first satellite. The success of the launch of the 31 lb rocket gave America’s space mission a badly-needed boost after the Soviet Union’s propaganda coup with the Sputnik programme, and Van Allen was featured on the front cover of Time magazine in 1959….
An entire academic discipline, that of magnetospherical physics, owes its existence to Van Allen’s discoveries.
From the beginning, Van Allen had been keen not only to ensure that rockets were successfully launched, but that they should provide information about aspects of the Earth. In 1950, in conjunction with the British geophysicist Sydney Chapman, he originated plans for an international scientific study of the planet which culminated in the International Geophysical Year (1957-58) of which the satellite programme was the most visible and successful element.
Explorer I’s launch in January 1958 was followed by two further rockets in March, carrying a cigarette-sized "magnetic tape recorder" devised by Van Allen. Explorer IV followed in June, and confirmed the existence of a radiation band 250 miles above the Earth.
He then supervised the Pioneer 10 and 11 rockets, which studied the radiation belts around Jupiter in 1973 and 1974, and went on, five years later, to do the same for Saturn, work which he described in his book First to Jupiter, Saturn and Beyond (1981). He continued to survey the results of the Pioneer and Mariner programmes over decades.
He was also a significant force in the interplanetary missions to Venus, Mars, Neptune, Saturn, Venus and Uranus, contributing to the Voyager programme and the Galileo spacecraft. Much of the knowledge which we now have of the electromagnetic forces, plasmas and radio signals in the solar system derives from the instruments which Van Allen devised and supervised.
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