Events
The International Geophysical Year traces its origins to the International Polar Years, which had been held in 1882-1883 and 1932–1933 (and more recently in 2007-2009). In March 1950, several top scientists (including Lloyd Berkner, Sydney Chapman, S. Fred Singer, and Harry Vestine), met in James Van Allen's living room and suggested that the time was ripe to have a worldwide Geophysical Year instead of a Polar Year, especially considering recent advances in rocketry, radar, and computing. Following the March 1950 meeting, Berkner and Chapman proposed to the International Council of Scientific Unions that an International Geophysical Year (IGY) be planned for 1957-58, coinciding with an approaching period of maximum solar activity.
In 1955, the U.S. announced Project Vanguard as part of the US contribution to the International Geophysical Year, a project to launch an artificial satellite into an orbit around the Earth. It was to be run by the US Navy and to be based on developing sounding rockets, which had the advantage that they were primarily used for non-military scientific experiments.
To the surprise of many, the USSR launched Sputnik 1 as the first artificial Earth satellite on October 4 1957. After several failed Vanguard launches, Wernher von Braun and his team convinced President Dwight D. Eisenhower to use one of their US Army missiles for the Explorer program (there then being no inhibition about using military rockets to get into space). On November 8 1957 the US Secretary of Defense instructed the US Army to use a modified Jupiter-C rocket to launch a satellite. The US achieved this goal only four months later with Explorer 1, on February 1 1958, but after Sputnik 2 in November 3 1957, making Explorer 1 the third artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet victory in the "Space Race" would be followed by considerable political consequences, one of which was the creation of the US space agency NASA on July 29 1958.
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Famous quotes containing the word events:
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—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
“There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)