[meteorite-list] Van Allen dies

From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed Aug 9 19:07:32 2006
Message-ID: <15qkd21r4q05j2tc0uq9ta03ftq2hst0uj_at_4ax.com>

Not directly meteorite related, but he was an important figure to the space
program:

http://www.woi-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5262147&nav=1LFX

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) _ Physicist James A. Van Allen, a leader in space
exploration who discovered the radiation belts surrounding the Earth that now
bear his name, died Wednesday. He was 91.

The University of Iowa, where he taught for years, announced the death in a
statement on its Web site.

In a career that stretched over more than a half-century, Van Allen designed
scientific instruments for dozens of research flights, first with small rockets
and balloons, and eventually with space probes that traveled to distant planets
and beyond.

Van Allen gained global attention in the late 1950s when instruments he designed
and placed aboard the first U.S. satellite, Explorer I, discovered the bands of
intense radiation that surround the earth, now known as the Van Allen Belts. The
bands spawned a whole new field of research known as magnetospheric physics, an
area of study that now involves more than 1,000 investigators in more than 20
countries. The discovery also propelled the United States in its space
exploration race with the Soviet Union and prompted Time magazine to put Van
Allen on the cover of its May 4, 1959, issue.

The folksy, pipe-smoking scientist, called ``Van'' by friends, retired from
full-time teaching in 1985. But he continued to write, oversee research, counsel
students and monitor data gathered by satellites. He worked in a large,
cluttered corner office on the seventh floor of the physics and astronomy
building that bears his name.

``Jim Van Allen was a good friend of our family. His loss saddens Christie and
me,'' Gov. Tom Vilsack said. ``His passing is a sad day for science in America
and the world.

Though he was an early advocate of a concerted national space program, Van Allen
was a strong critic of most manned space projects, once dismissing the U.S.
proposal for a manned space station ``speculative and ... poorly founded.''

Explorer 1, which weighed just 31 pounds, was launched Jan. 31, 1958, during an
emotional time just after the Sputnik launches by the Soviet Union created new
Cold War fears. The instruments that Van Allen developed for the mission were
tiny Geiger counters to measure radiation.

Near the 35th anniversary of the launch, Van Allen recalled in an Associated
Press interview how scientists waited tensely for confirmation the satellite was
in orbit. When the signal finally came, ``it was exhilarating. ... That was the
big break, knowing it had made it around the earth, that it was actually in
orbit.''

The success of the flight created nationwide celebration. Equally exciting for
the scientists was the discovery of the radiation belts, a discovery that
happened slowly over the next weeks and months as they pieced together data
coming from the satellite.

``We had discovered a whole new phenomenon which had not been known or predicted
before,'' Van Allen said. ``We were really on top of the world, professionally
speaking.''

Later in 1958, another scientist proposed naming the belts for Van Allen. His
later projects included the Pioneer 10 and 11 flights, which studied the
radiation belts of Jupiter in 1973 and 1974 and the radiation belts of Saturn in
1979.

Van Allen continued to monitor data from the Pioneer 10 spacecraft for decades
as it became the most remote manmade object, billions of miles away. Closer to
Earth, satellites had revolutionized communications, military surveillance and
environmental monitoring. Asked in 1993 whether he envisioned the era of
satellite communications, he said: ``I guess the honest answer is not really,
but I'm not astonished. That sort of thing was kicking around.''

In 1987, President Reagan presented Van Allen with the National Medal of
Science, the nation's highest honor for scientific achievement. Two years later,
Van Allen received the Crafoord Prize, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences in Stockholm each year since 1982 for scientific research in areas not
recognized by the Nobel Prizes. Besides the discovery of the Van Allen belts,
the academy cited him for providing the first instruments carried near another
planet, those taken on the 1962 Venus mission by Mariner 2, and for his work
training other space researchers.

``I love to work and I love this subject,'' he said in 1993. As for quitting, he
said, ``not as long as I'm able I won't.''

Van Allen was born Sept. 7, 1914, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. As an undergraduate
at Iowa Wesleyan College, he helped prepare research instruments for the Byrd
Antarctic Expedition. He got his master's and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa.
After serving in the Naval Reserve during World War II, he was a researcher at
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, supervising tests of captured German V-2
rockets and developing similar rockets to probe the upper atmosphere.

One of the highlights of this early research was the 1953 discovery of electrons
believed to be the driving force behind the northern and southern lights.
Through his career, he continued to advocate unmanned satellites, once telling a
panel that manned space programs have been beset by cost overruns but unmanned
rockets ``have delivered on their promises and have gone far beyond them.''

In testimony before a House subcommittee in 1985, Van Allen said that President
Reagan's endorsement of a $20 billion manned space station project was ``so
speculative and so poorly founded that no one of lesser stature would have dared
mention it to an informed audience.''

In 2004, he spoke out again, arguing against Bush administration plans for a
space station on the moon and a manned mission to Mars.

``I'm one of the most durable and fervent advocates of space exploration, but my
take is that we could do it robotically at far less cost and far greater
quantity and quality of results,'' he
said.

Van Allen was named to the National Academy of Sciences in 1959. He also was a
consultant to the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, NASA and the
Space Studies Board of the National Academy of Sciences.
  
Received on Wed 09 Aug 2006 07:00:21 PM PDT