Explorer 1 in pre-launch configuration atop its rocket. Courtesy Marshall Space Flight Center.
Sixty years ago January 31, the U.S. sent its first successful satellite launch skyward. Onboard was the Explorer 1 spacecraft, which was created as part of the country’s participation in the International Geophysical Year. That was a time of scientific exploration of Earth, its magnetic field, and other properties. Explorer 1 carried a cosmic ray experiment, designed and built by James Van Allen and his team (and for whom the Van Allen Radiation Belts are named). It sent back some tantalizing data, which spurred scientists to do further work with later Explorer satellites. The biggest discovery it made was the Van Allen radiation belts, a zone of trapped radiation high above Earth’s surface. The spacecraft also counted “hits” from cosmic dust in near-Earth space.
The Explorer 1 launch wasn’t the first satellite. That honor goes to the Soviet Sputnik launch a few months earlier, on October 4, 1957. While the U.S.’s satellite had been long-planned, the Soviet launch was a surprise. They, too, had been planning for a while, but they managed to get up there first.
Both launches were, in a sense, the pivotal starting point of the Space Race that eventually led both countries to head for the Moon. Of course, we all know there’s more to the story of space exploration, and it continues. Launches to Mars are in the works, as are trips to the Moon, and ideas for more spacecraft to head out to the outer solar system. We have a flock of observatories in space giving us insights into some of the most distant objects and events in the universe, as well as some of the closest. That’s the legacy of Explorer 1; one that everything from our commsats to the New Horizons mission draws from for their successes.
A memorial to fallen astronauts left on the Moon by Dave Scott and James Irwin during Apollo 15. It honors 14 astronauts who had died by that time and remains as a reminder of the astronauts aboard Challenger, Columbia, and others who have lost their lives during space exploration and training. Courtesy NASA.
Space exploration has its calendar of successes…and failures. Late January and early February each year mark the sad anniversaries of three major U.S. space missions that ended tragically with loss of astronaut lives. They commemorate the loss of the crew in the Apollo 1 fire on January 27, 1967, the Challenger mishap and seven lives lost on January 28, 1986, and the breakup of Columbia upon reentry and the loss of astronauts on February 1, 2002. Each one taught NASA tough lessons and forever proved Gus Grissom’s prophetic words right: “If we die, we want people to accept it,” he said. “We are in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”
His words came true not very long after he said them, underlining the fact that going to space is not easy.
The Loss of Life in the Pursuit of Space Exploration
The U.S. isn’t the only country to experience space tragedies. The Soviet Union lost a cosmonaut to a parachute failure in 1967 and three cosmonauts in 1971 when they asphyxiated on the way back to Earth after a mission. Those were serious blows to their space program, and details about what happened took a long time to come out.
Ground-training tragedies also struck the U.S. and Soviet Union. Apollo 1 was one such incident. There were also aircraft crashes that killed a number of astronauts in the U.S. and Soviet Union. One tragedy involved a fire in a pressure chamber. In each one, technical hubris came back to haunt the space program. It led to the mishaps that took people’s lives during space missions. That’s the nature of technology; it serves us well when we use it right. But, if we take shortcuts or cut costs or overlook possible problems, technology can come back to bite us in ways that we will never forget.
It Will Happen Again
It’s almost a certainty that others will die in space mishaps in the future. Loss is a part of the way forward, unfortunately. Space exploration is not an easy task. The technologies involved can fail, be sloppily built, or simply not be up to the task we thought they could. Moon missions, orbital missions, Mars trips, it doesn’t matter. It will happen. What defines us is our reaction to the next Challenger or Columbia or Apollo 1.
The painful evaluation after the fact defines who we are as space-faring civilizations. It doesn’t really matter whose space agency it happens to; it could be China or the U.S. or Russia or the Europeans or the Indians. The point is, these things will happen. Each agency will need to be honest about what happened so that future accidents don’t happen for the same reasons.
Knowing EXACTLY what happened and why is the ticket forward. It will help the next astronauts who put their lives on the line. Whether they are headed out to build a colony on the Moon, mine an asteroid, or set foot on the Red Planet, it’s the least we can do.
For those interested in learning more about the men and women who have given their lives in pursuit of space exploration, read the book “Fallen Astronauts,” by Colin Burgess and Kate Doolan. It’s a somber, well researched book and worth the time to read.
