Time Machine: Dr. James Van Allen

CEDAR RAPIDS - Abigail and Dr. James Van Allen and his wife, Abigail, met 'by accident” when she backed into his car at a stoplight in Baltimore. He scowled, but said nothing.

When she ran into him again a few minutes later at the applied physics lab at Johns Hopkins University where they worked, she said, 'Who do you think you are, throwing those dirty looks?” He called her the following Sunday to go bicycling.

The Van Allens married on Oct. 13, 1945, in Southampton, Long Island. They lived right outside Washington, D.C., until 1951 when Van Allen accepted the position of head of the University of Iowa Physics Department.

Van Allen was born in Mount Pleasant in 1914. He graduated from Iowa Wesleyan in 1935 and earned his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1936 and 1939, respectively. Abigail was an English Literature and language major at Mount Holyoke in South Hadley, Mass. The Van Allens had borne four of their five children when the United States sent up its first satellite in 1958.

In April 1950, the Van Allens hosted Sydney Chapman, a geophysicist visiting from England, and other scientists for dinner and a 'postprandial discussion” at their home in Silver Springs, Md. From that discussion came the International Geophysical Year, a coordinated worldwide study by more than 50 scientists of the Earth's physical processes and properties.

The International Council of Scientific Unions set July 1, 1957, through Dec. 31, 1958, as the IGY.

In preparation for the 18-month event, scientists began tests, developed instruments for experiments and invited scientists to propose projects.

In October 1952, Van Allen, along with graduate student Leslie Meredith and UI electronics technician Lee Blodgett set sail on the Coast Guard icebreaker Eastwind to Baffin Bay, west of northern Greenland. Balloons ten stories tall and ranging from 55 feet to 100 feet in diameter were launched at the speed of the wind from the Eastwind's 60-foot-square deck and ascended above earth's atmosphere.

Rockets suspended beneath the balloons then were fired almost vertically. Special nose cones contained instruments for cosmic ray research developed by Van Allen, who called the combination balloon-rockets 'rockoons.”

Photographic nuclear emission plates and other equipment from the balloons were seen to parachute safely to earth near Greenland, but snowstorms prevented recovery by helicopter. They were recovered in the spring.

Following that successful operation, Van Allen said although much of the data collected was classified by the Navy, he could agree with a release that said the work was significant because it was conducted where 'the earth magnetic field has a minimum of influence on cosmic ray particles.”

By 1956, as a member of the eight-scientist technical panel on the earth satellite program of the National Academy of Science, Van Allen was named chairman of a group in charge of instrumentation in the proposed satellites, dubbed 'baby moons.”

Following the Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 on Oct. 4, 1957, the IGY program switched to the already-tested Army Jupiter-C rocket, built under the direction of Dr. Wernher Von Braun, to accelerate a satellite launch.

On Jan. 31, 1958, the Explorer began its elliptical orbit around the earth. It was considerably smaller than the two satellites the Soviets had launched. The Explorer weighed 30.8 pounds. Russia's Sputniks were 184 pounds and 1,120.29 pounds. It was a slender tube, 6 1/2 feet long, orbiting at 18,000 mph every 106 minutes to 113 minutes at a distance varying from 230 miles to 2,000 miles above the earth. Sputnik 1 disintegrated on Jan. 4. Sputnik 2, carrying a dog as a passenger, returned to earth on April 14. The dog, Laika, survived only a few hours when the biometric system failed.

The Explorer held its orbit until 1970, but lost its ability to transmit after four months.

Most of the instruments broadcasting to the world from Explorer were designed and built at the University of Iowa, the only institution in the country to take part in the Army's Jupiter-C project.

'Iowa apparatus in the satellite includes a Geiger Counter ... two instruments to measure temperature inside and outside the satellite and the instrument that measures cosmic dust. The Geiger Counter is enclosed in a metal tube five inches long. Instrument readings are being broadcast by two transmitters in the satellite. The equipment broadcasts only every 16th or 32nd pulse for efficiency in communication and conservation of power,” said a Gazette story.

The UI Physics Department had already received fragmentary reports from the Army's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena by Feb. 9, indicating the satellite was working well and supplying good data. It was the first indication of the radiation belts around the earth that would be named after Van Allen. It took four days for the information to get from the satellite to the University of Iowa via the observing stations and the JPL. It would take even more time to be evaluated, Van Allen said. 'It's like knowing your team made a first down, but not knowing what the score is,” he said.

By July there were three baby moons in orbit. Explorer IV, the heaviest and most vital of the three, looped through its orbit every 110 minutes, giving out loud and clear signals on an intense field of radiation 600 miles in outer space. In his November IGY report, Van Allen said the doughnut-shaped radiation belt around the earth discovered earlier in the year by Explorers I and III was confirmed by Explorer IV.

'It appears likely,” Dr. Van Allen said, 'that many important geophysical phenomena (including the Northern Lights) are intimately related to the reservoir of charged particles found to be trapped in the outer reaches of the earth's magnetic field.”

Van Allen also learned not to talk about sending animals into space around his children. When he jokingly offered the family dog, Domino, an 8-year-old cocker spaniel, for outer space, Abigail said, 'Our children have been threatening him ever since. It looks like Domino is safe.”