Newswise — America's space age began on the evening of January 31, 1958 when a Huntsville-built Jupiter-C launch vehicle lifted a 30-pound satellite into orbit around the Earth.
The nation's first satellite, called Explorer I and officially known as Satellite 1958 Alpha, was launched as part of America's program for International Geophysical Year 1957-1958.
That launch would forever change the direction of America's quest in space exploration and the future of The University of Alabama in Huntsville, which had been created only eight years earlier.
When the Jupiter-C launch vehicle lifted from Cape Canaveral, the rocket was a special modification of the Redstone ballistic missile that was designed, built and launched by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) under the direction of Dr. Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who would bring his dreams of space exploration to Alabama.
The Jupiter-C has its origins in the United States Army's Project Orbiter in 1954. The project was canceled in 1955 when the decision was made to proceed with the Navy's Vanguard launch vehicle.
However, following the launch of the Soviet Sputnik I in October 1957, and the failure of the Vanguard to produce a successful launch, Dr. von Braun's team was directed to proceed with the launching of a satellite using the Jupiter-C. The missile had already been flight-tested in nose-cone re-entry tests for the Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM).
Bob Naumann, a professor and interim director of the university's Materials Research Center, remembered his involvement. He joined the ABMA in February 1957.
"I had been working in Gerhard Heller's group which was tasked with doing the thermal design of what was to become Explorer 1," he said. "One of the issues was keeping the satellite spinning during its lifetime to keep it from getting too hot or too cold on one side. I was doing calculations on the effect of magnetic damping and predicting how fast the spin would decay."
Within a couple of weeks, the Army's project had been grounded. "We were all shocked when the Soviets launched the Sputnik and were bitter because we knew we could have done it earlier if we had been given the chance. Of course, we were elated when we were finally given the go-ahead."
ABMA and JPL completed the job of modifying the Jupiter-C and launching Explorer I in 84 days. That launch took place a half century ago this month.
Now, five decades later, America's space program has produced numerous, fantastic results for space exploration. There has been a manned presence in space for most of the years since that fateful launch. Humans routinely orbit the planet and have traveled to the moon, where they successfully landed a craft on the moon and returned its travelers safely to Earth. These days, probes visit neighboring planets, and have left our solar system to reach farther into space. Astronauts maintain a constant presence in space aboard America's space station.
Today, America's vision for space plans for another visit to the moon by 2020. Mars is again being discussed as a destination by the nation's space agency.
And, through it all, The University of Alabama in Huntsville has been a key partner with NASA and the agency's largest field center, Marshall Space Flight Center.
The university's close partnership with NASA and America's space program was firmly entrenched when Dr. von Braun supported the growth of UAH soon after the launch of Explorer I. He knew that Marshall would need a strong university to support the academic and research expectations of the nation's space program.
As a result of his vision, UAHuntsville is one of the leading technological universities in the nation, ranking among America's top programs in scientific and engineering disciplines. The university consistently ranks among the nation's top universities in NASA-sponsored research. During the past half-century, hundreds of the university's graduates have been responsible for many of the agency's successes. NASA and Marshall remain one of the largest employers of UAHuntsville graduates with nearly 400 today.
One of the most prominent of those graduates is Jan Davis. It will be difficult to find a UAHuntsville graduate who has traveled higher or farther than Dr. Davis. ('83 M.S., Mechanical Engineering, '85, Ph.D., Engineering).
As an astronaut between 1987 and 1997, she traveled more than 11 million miles. She has taken her skills and knowledge to a very high plane, flying aboard the space shuttle on three flights and logging more than 670 hours in space.
After beginning her engineering career with Marshall Space Flight Center in 1979, she worked most recently as director of the Flights Project Directorate. Today, she is an executive at Jacobs Sverdrup, a company that has close ties to Marshall.
Born in Cocoa Beach, Fla., she moved to Huntsville at an early age and considers the city her home. She describes her role with the space program as a life-long dream.
"It is very gratifying to see something actually fly in space of which I have helped in the design, testing, certification, or flight crew," she said in an interview with UAH Alumni News. "I had a major role in both 'Returns to Flight' of Challenger and Columbia and although this was very hard work, it paid off and is well worth the effort in order to keep our country flying people safely into space."
She continues to promote America's leading role in space, and she spends time with young people to encourage their involvement in science and engineering. Dr. Davis is a routine speaker at the Sally Ride Science Festival, held annually on the UAHuntsville campus. "I hope my legacy is that I have made a difference in the programs I have worked on, and in the lives of the young people whose lives I have touched."
As far as the future, Dr. Davis said it looks bright, "if we receive the funding and public support that is needed for us to have 'boots on the moon' by 2020.
Clark Hawk, director of the university's Propulsion Research Center, agreed that public support is crucial to future success. "It certainly appears to me that America's commitment to manned space exploration is lukewarm at best," he said. ""¦ To me, the most significant thing is that wherever the program is going, it will need propulsion to do the job and university research will contribute to the technology base for future propulsion capabilities."
Hawk, who worked with the Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory at Edwards Air Force base, has been with UAH for 17 years. He says the university's Propulsion Research Center has evolved into a nationally recognized center of excellence.
"We now have a modern rocket test facility with the latest in high tech diagnostic and data acquisition equipment in which our students, faculty and staff can work. UAH has a unique combustion research tool of which there are only three in the world and only one in the U.S.A. We have the ability to run rockets on campus with both liquid oxygen and liquid methane, the only U.S. university to have this capability to my knowledge."
Naumann said science discovery is critical for our future.
"Science is what NASA does best," he said. "The contributions from the great observatories have advanced our knowledge of the universe by orders of magnitude in ways that could never have been done from Earth observatories. Unmanned missions to the planets likewise have expanded our understanding of our solar system. Earth-oriented missions have paid great dividends in understanding our environment and have become indispensable."
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