Pioneering in Campus Space Research

T

he Physics Department at the University of Iowa was a beehive of activity during those early years of the Space Age. James Van Allen provided inspired leader­ship. In addition to his own research, he worked diligently at the task of attracting outstanding faculty, staff members, and graduate students. He had the full support of the greater university, starting at its top with President Virgil Hancher, who gave him constant encouragement and support. During Van Allen’s tenure, he worked tirelessly to improve the department’s facilities, including, ultimately, the addition of a modern new physics building.

The Cosmic Ray Laboratory

Van Allen established the Cosmic Ray Laboratory immediately upon his arrival in 1951 in the old Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics Building. The center of the campus, the Pentacrest, is anchored by the old capital building in the center, as shown in Figure 15.1. The Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics Building is to the lower right in that picture.

The Cosmic Ray Laboratory occupied the basement of the south end of that building (to the right in the figure). Although that space served the purpose adequately at the beginning of the balloon and rockoon era, it quickly became overcrowded. By the end of the 1950s, although several other nearby rooms had been commandeered by the laboratory, it became necessary to go so far as to add a floor to the pit of the never-before-used elevator shaft for one of our environmental test chambers and to wall off part of the basement hallway for additional bench space (Figure 15.2).

With Van Allen’s well-established Navy connections, he was able to build an initial capability at very low cost by heavy reliance on military surplus equipment.

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That included everything from basic electronics components, such as resistors and capacitors, to balloons, radiosonde altimeters, machine tools for the instrument shop, Deacon and Loki rockets, and surplus gun mounts used as antenna mounts. It was common in those early days to see students unsoldering components and sorting nuts and screws from old military radio equipment for use in their instruments.

The laboratory’s capabilities grew rapidly after its modest beginning. The Interna­tional Geophysical Year provided a substantial infusion of funds. The Argus-related high-priority Explorer IV and V effort, including the decision to assemble those satellites in our laboratory, brought about a further substantial expansion.

Van Allen, of course, directed the laboratory, including the ever-present burden of assuring its financial support. After their arrival, Frank McDonald and Kinsey Anderson helped in managing the work of the laboratory. During my graduate years, I did much of the ordering and setting up of equipment and oversaw much of the

CHAPTER 15 • PIONEERING IN CAMPUS SPACE RESEARCH FIGURE 15.2 Views of portions of the University of Iowa Cosmic Ray Laboratory in the late 1950s. (a) The lab expansion into the basement hallway. One of the building’s main stairwells was beyond the double doors at the end, and the primary lab was beyond that. (b) The thermal-vacuum test chamber located in the old elevator shaft. The test instrument on the table was for checking the S-46 payload. (c) The vibration test facility. The racks housed the instrumentation and power amplifiers, while the vibration table is in the left foreground with a test fixture mounted on it. (d) Anabelle Hudman in the data storage room at the north end of the hallway, with racks of receiving station tapes from the early Explorer and Pioneer spacecraft.

laboratory’s day-to-day operation. By the end of 1960, it had become a full-fledged Space Sciences Laboratory, including all of the capabilities for developing, building, and testing spacecraft and for processing and interpreting their data.

During that period, the laboratory produced the first university-built satellites. During the next decade, it established a complete satellite data acquisition and com­manding station at nearby North Liberty and a satellite control center on the campus. With those capabilities, the laboratory was able to provide unique student experiences covering the entire gamut of space-related research, from conception of experiments; through development, building, and launching of the instruments; to operating them and deriving and publishing the scientific results.

The laboratory’s early successes, buoyed by pictures in the Iowa newspapers of the cramped laboratory, provided fuel for vastly improving the facilities. In 1964, the laboratory moved into a completely new Physics Building funded substantially by the U. S. space program. That building, shown under construction in Figure 15.1, has been known from its beginning as Van Allen Hall.

OPENING SPACE RESEARCH

For a time, Van Allen considered establishing a more formally constituted institute. In July 1958, he prepared a four-part memorandum proposing such an institute, addressed to the National Academy’s Space Science Board.1 The four parts of the proposal were titled (1) “Future Satellite and Lunar-Flight Experiments Already Being Prepared at S. U.I.,” (2) “Specific Additional Experiments (1958-1961),” (3) “General Remarks on Other Additional Work (1958-1961),” and (4) “A Proposed INSTITUTE OF SPACE SCIENCE at the State University of Iowa.”

The document was designed to show the overall record of competence and achieve­ment and used that and the promise of continuing leadership as the basis for establish­ing such an institute. It argued the case for shifting from operating on a short range, ad hoc basis to a longer-term structure to provide greater continuity. He proposed that it be organized as an integral part of the academic establishment of the university solely for the conduct of pure research, that its activities be intimately related to the graduate and undergraduate work of the Department of Physics, and that senior persons hold joint appointments on the teaching faculty of the department and on the research staff of the institute. The institute’s primary emphasis would be on research related to primary cosmic radiation, the geomagnetic field, interplanetary plasma, and aurorae. Proposed institute divisions were experimental, theoretical, components and envi­ronmental testing, field operations, and shop. The proposal named eight individuals (including this author) who would form an initial staffing cadre.

Van Allen discussed the establishment of such an institute with several of us from time to time. It was clear that he was weighing the advantages of such a formal long­term arrangement against the added administrative responsibility for sustaining the funding. According to author Abigail Foerstner, one of his additional concerns was the problem of recruiting and retaining a critical mass of key staff members in such a rapidly evolving environment.2 He also harbored some doubts about whether it was really a necessary step in achieving what he wanted to do. After his initial proposal resulted in no response from Washington, Van decided not to push it further.

Although abandoning the concept of a formal institute, he did follow up with a proposal to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) soon after its formation for a continuing program of research with satellites and space probes.3 That proposal asked for support on a broad and long-term basis for a substantial body of work. Specifically, it asked for support for (1) data reduction and analysis on a continuing basis, (2) identification of the components of the great radiation belt, (3) recovery flights of nuclear emulsions, (4) long-term temporal and spatial monitoring of intensity in the radiation belt, (5) lunar probe radiation measurements, (6) pole-to – pole orbits, (7) composition and energy spectra of components of the primary cosmic radiation, (8) magnetic field measurements, (9) deep space probes, (10) facilities, and (11) environmental and other test equipment. That proposal was also not funded.

Although NASA did eventually establish institute-like organizations at several other campuses, it adopted the general practice, by and large, of funding university

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research on a mission-by-mission basis through announcements of opportunity for specific missions.4

It is interesting to note that seven of the eight cadre members for the initially pro­posed institute (all of those other than Van Allen himself) moved to work at other insti­tutions during the next several years. Whether the formation of the institute would have anchored some of those individuals in Iowa is one of those unanswerable questions.

Nevertheless, the failure to form an institute, or to obtain funding on a broad sustaining basis, does not appear to have impeded the program at the University of Iowa. The Physics Department has continued to conduct a vigorous program of space research until the present day.