By Mary O’KEEFE

Sixty years ago, on Jan. 31, the United States officially entered the Space Race with the successful launch of the Explorer I satellite and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory became a player on the world space stage.

JPL held a celebration of the success of Explorer 1 on Jan. 31 and looked not only to its past but to the future and how this one satellite changed the trajectory of JPL.  

“Most of us know Explorer 1 as America’s first satellite, but not everyone realizes is it was really the first scientific spacecraft,” said Dr. Michael Watkins, director of JPL, in a video of Explorer 1. 

In 1937, a group of Caltech students and rocket enthusiast were making homemade rockets. The U.S. Army took notice of these “experiments” and knew they had value for their purposes. As World War II was coming to an end, engineers were still in high demand as the threat moved from Hitler to the Cold War. Engineers at JPL continued to work with missiles even though many scientists had reservations about working with the military. They worked and tested their missiles in White Sands, New Mexico near the area where the atomic bomb was tested.  

In 1945, after WWII, a group of German scientists, including Dr. Wernher von Braun who worked in Nazi Germany, was captured/surrendered to the Americans. Dr. von Braun had been a leader in missile development during WWII. He was part of the team that designed and developed the V-2 rocket. In America he and other German scientists and engineers worked with the U.S. Army on an intermediate range ballistic missile program. 

The Caltech/JPL engineers reluctantly worked with the Germans as they moved toward creating a missile that could carry a satellite into space. The military’s purpose at first was to be able to carry a payload that would include a nuclear bomb. The Caltech engineers, including Dr. William Pickering who later served as the director of JPL from 1956 to 1976, did not like working with the Germans. But he and others followed the orders of the U.S. Army. At one point, Louis Dunn, who served later as JPL director from 1946 to 1954, did not allow von Braun on the grounds but gave in after an Army colonial ordered them to work together. There may have been lingering tensions but, by 1947, JPL and the Germans were working together. 

The world was changing and, in 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb. The Americans were no longer the only ones with this power and the world was thrown into the Cold War. 

The teams from JPL, with the German scientists, worked together on several rockets each time improving their fuels, range and guidance. Then Sputnik was launched on Oct. 4, 1957 and, again, the world panicked. All were in awe of the technology while, at the same time, were terrified the Russians would now rule the globe from there orbiting position. 

“That sort of shocked us pretty much,” said John Casani, JPL engineer, in a video about Explorer 1. “We could see the thing flying over head … The Russians had done it and we hadn’t.”

That was pretty much the feeling throughout the U.S. The Russians beat us but, for President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Sputnik did not mean the U.S. was out of the race. Of course, it didn’t help that the Russians then launched Sputnik II with a dog on board.

There were worries that the Soviet Union would next send a hydrogen bomb to the moon, there was even talk that Americans do the same, but Eisenhower, according to the JPL Explorer 1 video, simply asked why. “We have no enemies on the moon,” he said.

Eisenhower’s approach to the space race was scientific discovery. He wanted the satellites to be focused on science, not on military purposes, and thus launched a mini space race between the Army and Navy. Eisenhower was to award the task of launching a satellite to one of the branches, and the Navy won. 

Its Vanguard Project did not get off the ground … literally. Eisenhower turned to the Army and JPL. 

Although JPLers were not supposed to be working on a rocket after the Navy won the contract, Pickering and the JPL team had been working quietly, without the knowledge of the military, on what would be the Explorer project. 

When the call came into the Army to go with its project, JPL was ready. It was given 90 days to put it all together and launch. There were successes and failures, but finally on Jan. 31, 1958, Explorer 1 was launched. According to Pickering, there had been a decision not to make a public announcement until the satellite was in contact over California. 

“So we sat there for an hour and a half, and the time [for contact] came and went,” Pickering said in the video. 

Apparently the jet stream had boosted the rocket into a high orbit, which affected the time of contact by eight minutes. 

“The longest eight minutes I ever spent in my life,” Pickering said. 

But then the signal was heard and life changed for everyone at JPL. The satellite carried its scientific payload that included a cosmic ray detector designed to measure the radiation environment in Earth orbit that was provided by Dr. James Van Allen. 

After they received the signal, von Braun, Pickering and Van Allen were driving to the National Academy of Science to talk about the satellite. 

 “I remember sitting in the car with the three of us in the backseat on a cold and rainy January night in Washington,” Pickering said. 

They weren’t certain if anyone would show up to the National Academy of Science because it was early in the morning, but the three walked into a full auditorium. That is where the iconic photo was taken of von Braun, Van Allen and Pickering holding the model of a rocket over their heads was taken. 

By launching the scientific satellite, JPL went from military-based to science-based exploration. And Van Allen’s experiment revealed a much lower cosmic ray count than expected. 

“Van Allen theorized that the instrument may have been saturated by very strong radiation from a belt of charged particles trapped in space by Earth’s magnetic field. The existence of these radiation belts was confirmed by another U.S. satellite launched two months later, and they became known as the Van Allen Belts in honor of their discoverer,” according to JPL. 

And what scientists and engineers have learned from Explorer 1 and the later satellites continues to guide exploration today.