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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, March 17, 2008 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Abigail Foerstner

Van Allen with Explorer I satellite

"James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles"

ABSTRACT -- This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the US's first satellite, Explorer I. James Van Allen developed Explorer I's radiation detectors in cooperation with Wernher von Braun, who developed the launch vehicle, and with the Jet Propulsion Lab. Theirs was not originally planned as the first satellite, but they stepped into the breach when another team failed to achieve orbit.

The radiation detectors on Explorers I and III (America's first satellites) discovered the radiation belts that were named after Van Allen. However, the first evidence of the belts was a reading of zero radiation from the Geiger tube detectors. "They told us our instruments weren't working. We knew better and realized we had encountered a whole new phenomena in space," Van Allen said. Redesigned detectors on Explorer IV finally gave accurate readings of the radiation. Their readings detailed the natural radiation belts and artificial radiation belts generated by nuclear blasts in an audacious 1958 test of an anti-ballistic missile space shield.

Van Allen trail blazed the field of space science, led the way to remapping the solar system and continued his research at the University of Iowa until he died last year at the age of 91. His instruments onboard more than 200 rockets, satellites and space probes transmitted data over six decades. Pioneer 10, launched for NASA’s 21-month mission to Jupiter in 1972, raced against Voyager 1 to discover the boundary of our solar system. The mission sent Van Allen more than 30 years of readings and Pioneer 10 journeyed some 8 billion miles before falling silent in 2003, an odyssey celebrated in the title of the biography, James Van Allen: The First Eight Billion Miles, by Abigail Foerstner.

SPEAKER -- Abigail Foerstner teaches and practices journalism in Chicago. She is a graduate of Nortwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, where she now teaches health and science journalism. She is part of a team developing an expanded curriculum for health, science and environmental journalism. She will direct a summer initiative to develop innovative stories on politics, public policy, and the global environment.

She began her journalism career by writing on science and the environment for the Chicago Tribune. She has also written freelance articles, not only on science, but also on art and photography for a number of publications. Photography was central to her book Picturing Utopia. For the book, she collected rare photographs of a nineteenth century utopian settlement.

She spent seven years researching and writing her biography of James Van Allen. She is now writing a biographical essay on Chicago artist Barbara Crane, to be published in the companion book for a retrospective exhibition.

She is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Association of Science Writers, and the American Polar Society.


Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov