Solar System Exploration: Sputnik I Against Explorer I

The 1950’s were a time of economic prosperity in America. World War II had ended and the soldiers had been welcomed home as heroes. Not only did they receive support from the public, but also by G.I Bills that allowed veterans to go to college and purchase homes with subsidized mortgages.Businesses both small and large were growing. The membership of labor unions was growing which helped blue collar works afford middle class luxuries by fighting for higher pay and safer working conditions. There were a plethora of jobs to go around. Government spending was focused on improving infrastructure, veteran benefits, and developing technology. It was the beginning of the aggrandizement of suburban life. It wasn’t perfect though. In the midst of all of the economic growth, the 1950’s were also the beginning years of the Cold War which started promptly after World War II ended and lasted until the early 1990’s.

The Cold War was the culmination of years of resentment and distrust between the United States and the Soviet Union. The United States were terror stricken by the spread of communism and the Soviet Union despised the American Anti-Communist rhetoric and the “interventionist approach to international relations.” The first major part of the Cold War was the Containment policy which was the United States pursuit of limiting the expansion of communism. This was done by putting policies such as the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan into effect. Additionally, NATO was created, and was the first military alliance in American History. The Soviet reaction to this was to form the Warsaw Pact which was the union of communist countries. This drove the tension between the Soviet Union and the United States even deeper.

The relationship between these two countries became so tense that in the United States that it brought about the Red Scare and Mccarthyism, an era that is often compared to the Salem Witch Trials due to the hysteria that surrounded it and the fact that just as little evidence was collected to prove someone was a communist as there was to prove someone was a witch in Salem. The next major part of the Cold War was the arms race. The further development of atomic weaponry and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles was inspired by fear with each country attempting to one up the other. This brings us to the Space Race. The ultimate one upmanship. The big contest of the Cold War.

In John F. Kennedy’s famous address at Rice University he said, “we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.” (Kennedy) This inspirational speech got Americans excited for space exploration, but it was a long road to get to Rice University and then the moon in the years following. A space race by definition is “the competition between nations regarding the achievements in the field of space exploration.” Technically, one could say that the space race continues today with other countries furthering the accomplishments made in this time period, but usually when a person says “the Space Race” they are referring to the one between the Soviet Union and the United States.

From the Apollo missions, space walks, the first solar powered and communications satellites, the first photographs of the earth from space and the far side of the moon to the first imaging weather satellites and spy satellites and many more, there were great accomplishments of the space race and the beginning of all of this was the Sputnik I. The first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth was the Sputnik I. Launched by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957 the Sputnik I intensified the Cold War and kicked off the space race. While both the United States and the Soviet Union were working on Earth orbiting satellites, the Soviet Union took the United States by surprise when the Sputnik I went into space. American scientists had no idea how far behind they were in comparison to their Soviet counterparts.

That October night in 1957 changed the world forever. This groundbreaking piece of technology was made of an aluminum alloy, “about the size of a beach ball,” and weighed almost exactly 184 pounds (Garber). It was approximately “500 miles up, at the speed of 18,000 miles per hour, Sputnik I circled the globe every 96 minutes, making 1,440 orbits before beginning its reentry” (Sputnik’s 50th Anniversary). Inside the Sputnik I was a radio transmitter that sent beeps back “on 20 and 40 MHz frequencies, its signal was received both by scientists and amateur radio operators worldwide” (Alcom). 22 days later its batteries died. Interestingly the Sputnik became more than just a scientific sensation. The satellite became a pop culture icon “inspiring interior design, popular music, and even jokes (a Sputnik cocktail has ‘one part vodka, three parts sour grapes’” (Sputnik – Sputnik in Music). Louie Prima even recorded a song called “Beep! Beep!”

Aside from being “the first humanmade object [launched] into space,” the scientists who created it had additional objectives from its successful entry into orbit (Garber). These were to “test the method of placing an artificial satellite into Earth orbit; information on the density of the atmosphere by calculating its lifetime in orbit; test radio and optical methods of orbital tracking; determine the effects of radio wave propagation through the atmosphere; and, check principles of pressurization used on the satellites” (Dunbar). These tests helped scientists by providing information that would lead them to send the first living being into space on the Sputnik II, and the eventually to the Vostok Program which sent the first human into orbit. After 3 months to the date the Sputnik I began its reentry, and “calculations based on the last signals received from the satellite and the degradation of its orbit project that Sputnik I burned into the atmosphere” (Alcom).

Although it was only in orbit for a few months the Sputnik I had significant impact on the world. The United States responded to the launch of the satellite with a fear that the Soviet Union was developing military technology that they would not be able to compete against, and that they were going to become vulnerable. The space and weapons program became the first priority of United States policy makers which led to the creation of NASA. Shortly after the Sputnik I’s fall the United States launched their first successful satellite into space. On January 31, 1958 the Explorer I made its way into orbit to the elation of the United States. We were competitors to the Soviet Union.

The Explorer I was a very different design from the Sputnik I. Instead of a spherical design with four antennae, the Explorer I was long and had a cone shaped nose on one end. It was also painted, whereas the Sputnik was shiny and reflective. The paint on the Explorer I was “painted in alternate strips of white and dark green to provide passive temperature control of the satellite” (Explorer-I and Jupiter-C). The strips were determined by the effects of “firing time, trajectory, orbit, and inclination” on “shadow-sun-light intervals” (Explorer-I and Jupiter-C). In addition to a different shape, the Explorer I also contained instruments to detect cosmic rays, a microphone for micrometeorite impacts, a ring of guages to combat erosion from micrometeorites, and five temperature sensors, three of which were outside, one on the inside, and one for the nose.

The data collected by these tools were transmitted by “two fibre-glass slot antennas in the body of the satellite itself and four flexible whips forming a turnstile antenna,” and “by a 60-milliwatt transmitter operating on 108.03 megacycles and a 10-milliwatt transmitter operating on 108.00 megacycles” (Explorer-I and Jupiter-C). The biggest revelation of the Explorer I was through the detection of cosmic rays or lack thereof according to the detector. Dr. 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,” and that it caused the low cosmic ray count (Loff). As a later satellite would prove, he was correct. This was the discovery of Van Allen Belts.

Both of these satellites are incredibly important in the history of space exploration and what we know today. They have a few similarities such as they were both each country’s first successful earth orbiting satellites; they were both battery operated; they both made groundbreaking discoveries; they both burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere, but they are very different satellites. Starting with the weights of the two satellites, the Explorer I was significantly less heavy than the Sputnik I. The Explorer I was approximately 30 pounds to the Sputnik I’s 184 pounds which may have contributed to the Explorer I’s longevity in orbit compared to the Sputnik I. In addition to being lighter, the Explorer I contained more instruments, so it could measure a wider variety than the Sputnik I could which only contained a radio wave transmitter.

The scientists who build the Explorer I had taken into consideration that by measuring temperature and building gauges for micrometeorites would help improve the satellite’s longevity, and that it would provide data that would help with building better satellites in the future. The Explorer I also had a larger orbit that the Sputnik I. The Sputnik I orbited in a circle about 500 miles up, while the Explorer I orbited in a loop that was anywhere from about 220 miles to about 1,500 miles up again allowing for more data to be collected. The Explorer I made its final transmission almost five months after its launch, but didn’t fall back into Earth’s atmosphere until a little over two years after its launch.