James Van Allen: September 7, 1914 - August 9, 2006
Published on Aug 10, 2006 at 12:32 am.
3 Comments.
Filed under astronomers, rockets, space exploration.
James Van Allen died yesterday. He was the one whom the Van Allen Radiation Belts were named after. As a further interesting note, I have a letter signed by him from back in 1984. Hmm. I need to see if I can find that letter.
He spent most of his life in Iowa. He was born there. He went to Iowa Wesleyan College. His graduate degrees were from University of Iowa, where he also spent many years as a faculty member. He was a department chair there for a while, too, and it was in that capacity that he signed the letter that was sent to me (he didn’t actually write directly to me!). His gradaute work at Iowa led him to the Carnegie Institute in Washington, DC, and then to Johns Hopkins. Like many scientists, he worked on weapons systems during World War II. During the war, he developed radio proximity fuses to detonate warheads in the vicinity of a target without requiring a direct hit.
The electronic miniaturazation needed for radio proximity fuses helped in Van Allen’s post war work work. Rockets could lift payloads higher, but the post-war American rockets could not lift heavy payloads, so miniature electronics were needed. Van Allen’s work in miniaturization was important for rocketry. Van Allen oversaw rocketry research for the Army until 1951 when he returned to the University of Iowa. At Iowa he turned his studies to atmospheric physics. For years the Earth’s upper atmosphere had been studied using high altitude balloons. Rockets, though, could lift small payloads higher. Once again, Van Allen’s work with miniaturization came in handy. He further developed a system called a “rockoon,” which consisted of a rocket lifted to high altitude by a balloon. When the balloon got as high as possible, the rocket ignited and flew to higher altitudes than it would be able to do from the ground. These studies showed strange readings of unexpectedly high radiation readings at very high altitudes.
So, when the United States and Soviet Union both announced that they would launch an Earth orbiting satellite for the International Geophysical Year (1957-1958), he began work with 
the Army’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to put miniaturized radiation detectors in a small satellite. With the failure of the Vanguard rockets to launch a satellite, the Army launched JPL’s Explorer I, with Van Allen’s detector onboard, atop an Army rocket designed by Wernher von Braun. Explorer I, and its two successors Explorer II and Explorer III, found very high radiation levels in space. Van Allen deduced from these results that this meant that there must be bands or radiation 
surrounding Earth. These are now known as the Van Allen Radiation Belts. They are charged particles caught in Earth’s magnetic field. Despite the fact that the Soviet Union beat us into space, our satellites produced far more useful data than the early Sputniks did.
Van Allen also worked on radiation detectors aboard the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft that studied the radiation zones around Jupiter and Saturn. These two Pioneers are now leaving the Solar System. Van Allen was always a great supporter of the US space program, but he was often highly critical of manned spaceflight. He seemed to believe that unmanned spacecraft were more cost effective.
He died just about a month shy of his 92nd birthday.
-Astroprof
(Photos:Â Courtesy of NASA)
Astroprof’s Page » Flying your business card into space on November 6, 2006 at 2:37 pm: 1
[…] Here’s an interesting little news bit that I saw posted over at Ed’s site. It is about Xenotech Research’s new rockets. These rockets will be small rockets designed for suborbital or low Earth orbit payloads — most likely research payloads. One thing that makes these rockets sort of unique is that instead of launching from the ground, they will be launched while already high above much of the Earth’s atmosphere. Now, this is sort of like what the upper stage of most rockets do, anyway, but instead of a first stage lifting an upper stage to altitude, these rockets will use a balloon to lift them high into the stratosphere. This is a rocket design called a rockoon.  The basic idea behind rockoons was developed in part by Jame van Allen, as I had mentioned in a previous entry. These new rockoons will be a major improvement over the initial designs from a half century ago. […]
Matt Bille on August 16, 2007 at 4:09 pm: 2
A very good article. I am the co-author of the book The First Space Race (2004) for which Van Allen wrote the Foreword. I do need to add that Explorer II did not make orbit.
Astroprof’s Page » Explorer 1 on January 30, 2008 at 5:15 pm: 3
[…] 50 years ago, on the evening of January 31, 1958, a Juno rocket (also known as a Jupiter-C rocket), which was basically a modified Redstone ballistic missile, roared to life on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral, in Florida. Seconds later, at 10:48 pm Eastern Standard Time, the rocket lifted off. The rocket was the product of the hard work of Wernher von Braun, of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. The fourth stage of the rocket, though, was built and operated by the Army’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (later that year, both the ABMA and JPL were transfered to the newly created NASA). Just before the rocket was launched, the third stage was set spinning to stabilize it once it was released from the second stage. This gave the top of the rocket a rather peculiar look, rather like a spinning Coke can sitting on top of the rocket. The fourth stage contained a small solid rocket engine to put it into orbit, making it a satellite. This satellite was about 6 feet 8 inches (203 cm) long and 6.25 inches (15.9 cm) in diameter. It was not quite 14 kilograms in mass (weighing almost 31 pounds). It carried a small instrument package of mass about 4.8 kilograms (a bit under 11 pounds). The instrument package was largely designed by James van Allen of the State University of Iowa (now, just the University of Iowa). Nearly 40% of the satellite’s mass was batteries to provide power for the instruments and transmitters. The satellite, officially Satellite 1958 Alpha, was dubbed Explorer 1. It was the United States’ first orbiting satellite. There had been previous launches of rockets carrying payloads to the edge of space in suborbital flights, but Explorer 1 was the first thing that America put into orbit. It followed earlier failed attempts to launch Vanguard spacecraft. Both the United States and the Soviet Union had declared intentions of launching an orbiting satellite during the International Geophysical Year, which ran from July of 1957 through December of 1958. The Soviet Union beat America into space by launching Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957. On November 3, 1957, they surprised the world again by launching a dog into space aboard Sputnik 2. Vanguard was not doing well, and America was falling behind in the space race. So, von Braun was given the go-ahead to complete development on his plans to place a satellite into orbit. […]