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Introduction
Man's ancient quest to explore space developed after the birth of astronomy when it discovered that the flickering lights in the sky were real objects.The concepts behind space exploration have existed for hundreds of years.Although the dream of venturing into space was only pioneered in the 20th century , great scientists such as Galileo and Coppernicus established the principles centuries ago.Likewise the laws of motion presented by Newton that are the reasoning behind the functioning of rockets and Johannes Kepler's theories that govern the behaviour of the orbits of interplanetary spacecraft and satellites are at least 300 years old.
The men who revolutionized space flight include Russian Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, American Robert Hutchings Goddard, and German Hermann Oberth sice they were the first to conceptualize the idea . Germany produced advanced missiles and weapons of enourmous ballistic capability during World War II due to the work of Scientists such as Wernher von Braun . After they lost they war , the Germans were made to reveal their technology to other countries such as the United States and USSR that have since become the pioneers of modern space exploration. |
The Sputnik Missions
A picture of the Spunik-I |
Sputnik was the name of the Soviet Union's first space program consisting of four satellites. The word 'sputnik' literally translated from Russian means 'fellow traveller'. These satellites were built in the midst of the Cold War and greatly increased tension in the United States to build their own satellites.
The era of space exploration began with the launch of Sputnik-I, from Baikonur, USSR, which became the first man-made satellite in space, when it was launched on October 4, 1957. This 184 lb (83.6 kg) capsule, was designed to determine the density of the upper atmosphere and return data about the Earth's ionosphere. However, its two radio transmitters only returned signals to Earth for 21 days. It remained in orbit for almost sixth months. |
The Explorer Missions
The Explorer-I
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'Explorer' was the name given to the United States first space program as a reply to the Soviet Union's highly successful Sputnik program. Within four months of the Soviets launching the Sputnik-I, the United States launched it's first satellite, the Explorer-I on January 31, 1958. Fifty-four more satellites would follow from 1958-75.
The 30.6 lb Explorer-I, discovered the existence of a belt of charged particles trapped in space by the earth's magnetic field. These Van Allen Belts were named after the scientist Dr. James Van Allen, who discovered it's existense and designed and built the instrumentation of Explorer-I. The existence of these Van Allen Belts, discovered by Explorer-I, was confirmed by Explorer-III, which was launched on 26 March 1958.Other significant 'explorers' were - Explorer 38 (July 4, 1968), which measured galactic radio sources and studied low frequencies in space, and Explorer 53 (May 7, 1975), which was sent out to explore X-ray sources both inside and outside the Milky Way galaxy. |
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