Epic Rivalry Read online

  The Juno consisted of four stages, including the Jupiter-C first stage. Fourteen small Sergeant rockets made up the remaining stages, arranged in a drum-like container, with 11 in the outer ring (second stage) and 3 inside the ring (third stage), with Explorer on top of them. Firing in the proper sequence, the first three stages would exhaust their fuel and then drop away after burn-out. Finally, the fourth stage, Explorer itself, would be boosted into orbit by the final Sergeant. After the rocket blasted skyward that night, there was a longer-than-anticipated interval in receiving final confirmation that Explorer 1 had achieved orbit. Attributed to various causes, such as the satellite being temporarily out of radio range of the nearest tracking station, the wait was finally rewarded with positive news: Explorer 1 was a success!33

  “None of the [tracking] stations were hearing a thing,” von Braun later recalled. “That went on for what appeared to be hours. [The time was actually much less than that.] Meanwhile, we had to keep up appearances and had to smile and convince everybody that things were in perfect shape.” Eisenhower made a brief public announcement that “[t]he United States has placed a scientific satellite in orbit around the Earth” as part of its IGY participation. Privately, he told the aide who first brought him the news of Explorer’s success, “That’s wonderful. I sure feel a lot better now.”34

  Explorer 1 flew in an elliptical orbit, varying from 220 miles at its closest point to Earth to as far as 1,563 miles above the planet. It orbited Earth every 114.8 minutes, or a total of 12.54 orbits daily, and achieved more than 58,000 orbits before reentering Earth’s atmosphere and burning up on March 31, 1970. It continued to transmit data from orbit until May 23, 1958. Eisenhower and the entire nation felt the immense satisfaction that the American space program had achieved a real measure of success. In March 1958, Vanguard would finally launch its own orbital satellite, followed by the second successful Explorer, Explorer 3, on March 26. (Earlier in March, Explorer 2 did not achieve orbit due to a failure in the fourth stage of its Juno 1 launch vehicle.)

  The successful orbital launch led to the fulfillment of another dream as well. Once “freedom of space” had been established by Sputnik 1’s orbits across the United States, and America lofted its own IGY scientific satellite, Explorer 1, Eisenhower moved to exploit space reconnaissance in February 1958. He approved an intermediate spy satellite system to serve U.S. requirements pending full development of the WS-117L system he had authorized earlier. The new system, named Project Corona by CIA officials, involved taking pictures from space and then returning the film to Earth using a capsule detached from the satellite. It turned out to be a vital and highly successful element of American efforts to learn what the Soviets were up to on their side of the Iron Curtain.

  For both the Americans and Soviets, the space race was now in full stride.35

  REACHING FOR THE MOON

  Spurred on by the American successes, Korolev was anxious to catapult the Soviet Union into a new realm of space exploration—a bold plan to abandon the near-Earth orbits of the Sputnik satellites for a series of lunar probes. He prepared a paper on lunar exploration, a detailed blueprint of the essential steps required to reach the moon. His elaborate scheme took into account all the anticipated technical challenges: the rocket design, payload limits, necessary instrumentation, and launch windows. He put forth a compelling rationale: The deep space robotic missions offered yet another, even more dramatic, avenue to display the country’s prowess in space exploration. No less important, the projected lunar probes served an important scientific purpose—the unique opportunity to measure a range of outer space mysteries, from the moon’s magnetic field to cosmic radiation to micrometeorites. The most formidable challenge, as with the earlier Sputnik launches, was the design of a rocket with sufficient thrust to escape Earth’s gravity. The R-7 stood ready, but the veteran rocket would have to be fitted with an additional third stage to achieve the necessary speed of approximately 7 miles per second. No less daunting would be the design of an advanced guidance system to ensure that the rocket maintained a precise course in the void of outer space.

  Standing at the top of the ziggurat of Soviet politics was Nikita Khrushchev, and his posture toward these civilian uses of rocketry became the critical factor. He had approved the deployment of the R-7 for the Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2 with great enthusiasm. Khrushchev displayed an equal measure of openness aboout the lunar probes, seeing the enormous propaganda potential in Korolev’s bold plan. Khrushchev—in the words of his son, Sergei—“wanted to beat the Americans in all spheres of life and to prove that our socialist system is working better.” Space was just one component of this overarching strategy.36

  His devotion to rocketry grew with each successive triumph. As premier of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev took delight in the public spectacle of space milestones. He had frequent conversations with designers and, later, with the growing cadre of cosmonauts as the Soviet manned space program took shape in the 1960s. His tenure in power endured until late 1964, when he was ousted in a coup led by Leonid Brezhnev.

  Korolev’s lunar probes, once approved in March 1958, started as a frustrating blend of delays and abortive launches in the early months of the program. Engine malfunctions were accompanied by acrimonious debates about the optimal engine configuration between Korolev and Valentin Glushko, the premier Soviet rocket engine designer. On September 23, 1958, there was an abortive launch of a Luna spacecraft, when the booster disintegrated just seconds into the liftoff. This same melancholy script was repeated on October 11, just days after the first anniversary of Sputnik 1. Another embarrassing failure followed on December 4, which only deepened the mood of futility at Baikonur.37

  Success finally came with Luna 1 (named Mechta, “dream”), launched on January 2, 1959. The redesigned R-7 successfully lifted the lunar probe beyond the grasp of Earth’s gravitational pull and set it on a fateful course toward the moon. After reaching escape velocity, the probe separated from the third stage. At the 70,000-mile mark, the spacecraft released a two-pound cloud of sodium gas, creating an extended orange vapor trail. This streaming patch of light with the brilliance of a sixth-magnitude star was visible over the Indian Ocean, allowing for a visual confirmation of the lunar trajectory.

  Luna 1 was designed to be the first human-made object to reach the surface of the moon, but the historic collision with the celestial body did not occur: The spacecraft passed the moon 34 hours after launch, missing its target by some 3,700 miles. Luna 1 then went into orbit around the sun, trumpeted as another first for the muscular Soviet space program. While Luna 1 did not carry any cameras on board, it had been fitted with sophisticated instruments, including detectors that measured Earth’s radiation belt, which demonstrated that the moon had no magnetic field and discovered solar wind, the powerful flow of ionized plasma emanating from the Sun. Luna 1 represented a genuine milestone, one that moved the arena of competition between the Soviet Union and the United States into deep space.

  The Soviets launched Luna 2 on September 12, 1959; it became the first Soviet probe to hit the moon. As with the first lunar probe, a large orange cloud of sodium gas was released, not just to mark the spacecraft’s trajectory, but to study the gas in the weightless environment of outer space. The lunar probe Luna 2, with a payload of 800 pounds, reached the moon after nearly a day and a half in flight, crashing into the lunar surface at a point east of the Sea of Serenity. Upon impact, the probe scattered a number of metal pendants to mark the spot of the historic impact. The pendants were inscribed with a simple message: “U.S.S.R. September 1959.” Hitting the moon—admittedly a huge but a fast-moving object approximately 240,000 miles beyond Earth—represented for the time an impressive display of marksmanship. The Soviet lunar rocket embodied a sophisticated guidance and navigation system to achieve this end.

  The most impressive lunar probe, Luna 3, departed Earth on October 4, 1959, on the second anniversary of Sputnik 1. This launch represented the most ambitious maneuver into outer s
pace yet attempted by Korolev and his team of engineers and scientists. Taking leave of Baikonur, Luna 3 entered a highly elliptical orbit from Earth, in a figure-eight trajectory that took it around the moon and then back again toward Earth. Coming as close as 3,800 miles to the moon’s surface, Luna 3 sped around to the far side (always hidden from view on Earth) to take photographs. On October 7, the television system on the probe took 29 photographs covering 70 percent of the moon’s far side. The photography took 40 minutes to complete. The images were then scanned for transmission to ground stations on October 18, at an optimal moment when Luna 3 neared Earth on its return path. The Soviets collaborated with the British to allow the famed 250-foot radio telescope at Jodrell Bank to record the pictures sent back from the Luna 3 spacecraft, a remarkable request given the secrecy surrounding all launches from Baikonur. The processed images—the first ever taken of the “dark side” of the moon—were not high quality, but they allowed for mapping and scientific analysis of the hitherto hidden features of the lunar surface.

  Having captured these unique images, the Soviets promptly christened certain prominent features of the newly discovered lunarscape, for example two “maria” (Latin for “seas”) on the far side of the moon were dubbed the “Sea of Moscow” and the “Sea of Dreams.” Throughout the dramatic lunar missions, Korolev had once again displayed his skill and efficiency in pushing the Soviet space program toward epochal new milestones. There was great irony in this latest chapter of Korolev’s career, the fact that he had enabled the Soviet Union to gain worldwide prominence as a pioneer in space exploration, yet he remained an anonymous figure in Soviet official media.38

  After the successful launch of Explorer 1 in 1958, the United States also turned its attention to lunar probes, seeking to compete in this new realm of space exploration. Initially, the primary aim was to design rockets to make flybys or possibly to impact on the lunar surface. An additional key factor in the development of lunar probes would be experimentation with new imaging systems.

  Pioneer 1, launched on October 11, 1958, ended in disaster, as the rocket failed to achieve escape velocity. Pioneer 2 followed on November 8, a mission that ended when the rocket’s third stage malfunctioned after an ascent of less than a thousand miles. On December 6 of that same year Pioneer 3, powered by a Jupiter-C Juno 2 rocket, traveled about one-fourth the way to the moon. However, Pioneer 3’s trek into outer space ended abruptly after it suffered a premature engine shutdown; the rocket ignominiously fell back into Earth’s atmosphere. Yet the saga of Pioneer 3 was not without scientific meaning: The abortive mission, before its fiery demise, confirmed the existence of the Van Allen Belts.

  These formative steps by the United States were quickly overshadowed in early January 1959, when Luna 1 executed the first-ever lunar flyby. In response, the decision was made to launch Pioneer 4 on March 3. Finally, American persistence was awarded with a measure of success; Pioneer 4 executed a flyby of the moon. Although a first for America’s troubled space program, the mission evoked an image of misadventure: The rocket veered off its planned path by 37,500 miles—an unscripted trajectory caused by an engine malfunction.

  At this juncture, the Soviet payloads for lunar probes outclassed the Americans in a dramatic fashion: while Luna 1 weighed around 796 pounds, Pioneer 4 tipped the scales at a puny 13 pounds! The American lunar probe missed the moon by a wide angle and then entered into a solar orbit. In 1960, Pioneer 5 carried out a successful interplanetary mission, sending its final radio message back to Earth across a distance of 22 million miles. From November 1959 to December 1960, the United States launched three lunar probes on Atlas Able boosters. All failed in their mission to reach lunar orbit.39

  Even with these reversals, the American space program was slowly acquiring maturity, building the critical institutional and technical means for future success in robotic missions to the moon and beyond. One vital research center for this activity in the 1960s would be the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. The laboratory dated back to the late 1930s, being an outgrowth of Theodore von Kármán’s research at the California Institute of Technology. Along with von Kármán, Frank J. Malina worked to make the JPL a major center for research.

  William Pickering emerged as a leader of JPL in the 1950s, giving the lab increased stature as a center for research and development of satellites, robotics, and advanced guidance systems. As it had developed Explorer 1, leading America into space, JPL would take the lead in the Ranger program in the 1960s, an important cornerstone of America’s Apollo manned lunar landing program. After several failures, the Ranger program finally yielded a success with Ranger 7 in July 1964. The probe returned 4,000 stunning photographs of the moon’s surface before crashing into it, helping to pave the way for manned landings. The gap with the Russians in all spheres of space travel would be closed as the decade of the 1960s ended.

  NASA TAKES CHARGE

  The opening salvoes of the space age brought the realization that some new organizational form or structure would be required to respond to the Soviet space challenge. Space was a new and different realm, a fact understood by all of the major players, including the Eisenhower administration, Congress, the military, defense contractors, and other involved parties. Eisenhower’s response was to propose to Congress the creation of a new federal agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He proposed that the new entity absorb a small existing agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and its various facilities. NACA, created in 1915, had evolved from conducting only aeronautical research to contributing significant space-related work by the opening of the space age. However, it was regarded as too small an agency to take on the additional responsibilities envisioned by Eisenhower and his science advisor, James Killian.40

  Eisenhower and Killian strongly believed that the national space agency should be civilian, but the Army and the Air Force resisted fiercely, asserting that they should be in charge of the space program, and that turning it over to a civilian agency would be a mistake. General Medaris and von Braun, among others, were strong advocates of this position. The Air Force was just as aggressive, and one of its generals publicly advocated a military base on the moon in an early 1958 speech. “The moon provides a retaliation [sic] base of unequaled advantage,” he said. A nuclear-armed American base on the moon would allow the United States to inflict “from the moon…sure and massive destruction” on the Soviet Union in the event it first attacked the United States, he added.41

  Eisenhower’s proposed legislation creating NASA was subjected to intense congressional debate, ending with the agreement with the president’s view that a civilian agency would oversee scientific and other nonmilitary space efforts, while reserving military requirements and programs for the armed services. But enough ambiguity remained to keep the space missions issue alive for years to come in such areas as control over huge and powerful military rockets that would be required to support civilian programs.42 In the short run, though, the legislation creating NASA, submitted to Congress by the White House in April 1958, was signed into law by Eisenhower in July of that year.

  A second noteworthy law took shape following a major debate over whether America was producing enough engineers and scientists to meet the Soviet challenge in space and elsewhere. The debate started immediately following the surprise of Sputnik 1 and focused on what role the federal government should play in closing the perceived educational gap between the United States and the Soviet Union. The National Defense Education Act, signed by President Eisenhower in September 1958, was intended as a limited and temporary measure. It made generous grants for the expansion of programs aimed at students studying science, mathematics, engineering, and foreign languages in high schools, colleges, and universities.43

  The United States was now truly in the space game. It had recovered from the shock of Sputnik 1 with a satellite of its own and more, and seemed ready to compete with the Soviets in the new sphere of unman
ned lunar probes. But these were only the earliest rounds of space exploration. Many challenges and surprises were ahead for both sides as they moved into the 1960s and the era of manned spaceflight, first in Earth orbit and then far beyond.

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  EYES IN THE SKIES

  In early 1955, more than two years before Sputnik 1 inaugurated the space age, a high-level panel delivered a top-secret report to President Eisenhower. It strongly recommended that the United States use Earth satellites to provide accurate intelligence from space on the true state of Soviet offensive capabilities. As a result, the CIA and the U.S. Air Force soon began to develop photo-reconnaissance satellites under a highly classified program code-named Corona.

  An Air Force C-119 recovers, in mid-air, spy photographs taken over the Soviet Union.

  Corona operated under the cover name “Discoverer” and the accompanying cover mission of scientific research. Following a series of heartbreaking failures, Corona finally delivered the goods: high-quality photographs taken from space of selected sites in the Soviet Union. Discoverer satellites were launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, allowing them to be placed in polar (north to south) orbits, during which the entire globe passed below them. The Discoverer’s camera was turned on as the satellite passed over pre-selected reconnaissance targets in Russia or elsewhere. Assuming that all went well to that point, the remaining challenge was to return the photos, taken on strips of 70-mm film, successfully to Earth. That was accomplished in a unique manner: A reentry capsule containing the exposed photographic film was detached from the remainder of the Discoverer satellite and rocketed back toward Earth.

  After successful reentry, a parachute opened and one of a group of Air Force planes, each deploying a flying circus-like trapeze, or net, was to ensnare the parachute in midair and then reel it into the aircraft. Not surprisingly, given the extraordinarily complex nature of all aspects of the Discoverer program, success was elusive for the first dozen plus attempts. 44