The Van Allen Belt Flip

For those of you who had Mrs. Henley in Freshman year science class at ole CGHS, from the AP :::

JAMES VAN ALLEN, 91

Found fame, honor in space

BY TODD DVORAK
Associated Press
IOWA CITY, Iowa - 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.

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.

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 as ``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.

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.

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 was born Sept. 7, 1914, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. He got his master's and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa.