![]() ![]() He used the magnetometer to make precise measurements of the geomagnetic field at three random Iowa locations. “I helped build a simple seismograph and was entrusted with checking out a field magnetometer on loan from the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, one of the most beautiful instruments that I have ever seen.” “I became a part of those preparations,” Van Allen says. He cites a professor, Thomas Poulter, in physics, as a principal inspiration, noting that he was in the process of preparing for a role as chief scientist on the second Byrd Antarctic Expedition. He had been born 44 years earlier, on 7 September 1914, on a farm in Iowa, a landlocked agricultural region in the middle of the US. Van Allen discovered these radiation belts in 1958 after the launch of Explorer 1, the first US satellite. ![]() The Van Allen belts, named for US physicist James Van Allen, are described by as “giant doughnut-shaped swaths of magnetically trapped, highly energetic charged particles” that surround Earth. ![]() This “deadly radiation of space”, as it was described in a Fox TV special, “Conspiracy Theory: Did we land on the moon?”, which first aired in 2001, was submitted as evidence that the 20 July 1969 moon landing may have been faked. “The issue of the Van Allen belt and its radioactivity was a particularly serious concern while planning the mission,” it says. A January 2017 article in Popular Mechanics magazine, with the headline “How NASA got Apollo astronauts through the dangerous Van Allen belts”, describes some of the “many difficulties” encountered by the US Apollo space program, which ran from 1961 to 1972. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |