Douglas Isbell
Headquarters, Washington DC                 January 28, 1998
(Phone: 202/358-1753)

Mary Beth Murrill
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA 
(Phone: 818/354-6478)

RELEASE: 98-15

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 its 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 three 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 spacecraft 
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 interplanetary science and astronomy."

-end-

NOTE TO EDITORS:  Photos are available to news media to 
illustrate this story by calling the Headquarters Audio 
Imaging Branch at 202/358-1900. Photo numbers are:

97-HC-482
97-HC-483