When it comes to nations with a long and rich history of space travel and exploration, Britain
isn't normally a country that comes to most people's minds.
However, they were the third country in the world to operate a satellite in orbit.
It's just a shame America ended up accidentally killing it just a few months later...
The satellite in question was the Ariel-1, which was developed as a joint-venture between
the United States and Britain, with Britain designing and building the core systems of
the satellite and NASA launching it into orbit via a Thor-Delta rocket.
The UK scientists first proposed the idea for Ariel-1 to NASA in 1959 after NASA made
an offer to help fly the scientific equipment of other nations into space.
Due to the close relationship between the two countries, details were easily and quickly
worked out and by the following year, scientists in the UK were given the go ahead to start
creating the instrumentation needed, while engineers in the US began work on the satellite
that would house the equipment.
On the 26th of April, 1962, the first international space effort ever was launched into space
and Britain was operating its first satellite.
According to NASA, the instruments aboard Ariel-1 were intended to help "contribute
to the current knowledge of the ionosphere" and its relationship with the Sun.
More specifically, scientists were curious about how the ionosphere, a part of the Earth's
atmosphere made of particles charged by radiation from the Sun, worked.
To accomplish its mission, Ariel-1 was loaded with a tape recorder for storing collected
data, a device designed to measure solar radiation, and several instruments used to measure how
the various particles in the ionosphere reacted and changed in response to external stimuli
from the cosmos, most notably the Sun.
On July 9, 1962, mere weeks after Ariel-1 was put into orbit and had successfully begun
transmitting data about the ionosphere back to Earth, British scientists were shocked
when the sensors aboard Ariel-1 designed to measure radiation levels suddenly began to
give wildly high readings.
Initially, they assumed that the satellite's instruments had failed or were otherwise just
malfunctioning.
As it turned out, as Ariel-1 was happily free-falling around the Earth, the US military had decided
to detonate an experimental 1.4 megaton nuclear weapon named Starfish-Prime in the upper atmosphere
as part of Project Fish Bowl.
The explosion, which happened on the other side of the planet to Ariel-1, sent a wave
of additional radiation around the Earth that ultimately damaged some of the systems on
Ariel-1, particularly its solar panels, ultimately killing it and about 1/3 of the rest of the
satellites in low-Earth orbit at the time.
This famously included the Telstar satellite, which was the first commercial communication
relay satellite designed to transmit signals across the Atlantic.
The Telstar actually wasn't in orbit at the time of the explosion, being put there the
day after the Starfish-Prime detonation.
However, the additional radiation created by the explosion took years to dissipate and
was not anticipated by the designers of this particular satellite.
The immediate result being the degradation of Telstar's systems, particularly the failure
of several transistors in the command system, causing it to stop working just a few months
after being placed in orbit.
The effects of Starfish-Prime weren't just limited to low orbit.
The electromagnetic pulse created by the blast ended up being much larger than expected and,
in Hawaii some 900 or so miles away from the blast, the pulse ended up knocking out a few
hundred street lights and damaged the telephone system.
Needless to say, a similar blast in today's digital society would have caused drastically
more damage.
As to the purpose of the Starfish-Prime explosion, according to James Fleming, a history professor
who combed through previously top-secret files and recordings concerning the blast, the U.S.
military were working with scientist James Van Allen to see if nuclear explosions could
influence the existing belts of radiation around the Earth.
Van Allen apparently started working with the military to launch nukes into these belts
the very same day he announced to the world that he'd discovered the belts, now known
as the Van Allen radiation belts.
Flemming noted of this, "This is the first occasion I've ever discovered
where someone discovered something and immediately decided to blow it up."
He forgot to mention the obligatory, FOR SCIENCE!!!
Incidentally, at around the same time the US was planning to send nuclear bombs into
orbit, British scientists were similarly experimenting with explosives by attaching grenades to suborbital
rockets to run atmospheric pressure tests; once again demonstrating that no matter where
they're from or what tools are available, scientists just really
like
to blow things up.
Speaking of blowing stuff up in space…
Star Conflict!!!!
Bonus Facts: • Not satisfied with just nuking the atmosphere,
the U.S. also once planned on nuking the moon.
If you presumed that the reasoning behind such an act was "because we can", you are
absolutely correct!
The hope was that the whole thing would boost public perception of how the U.S. was doing
in comparison to the Soviet Union in terms of the space race.
The project was labeled "A Study of Lunar Research Flights" or "Project A119" and was
developed by the U.S. Air Force in the late 1950s.
According to one of the leaders of the project, physicist Leonard Reiffel, hitting the moon
with an intercontinental ballistic missile would have been relatively easy to accomplish,
including hitting the target with an accuracy of about two miles.
This accuracy would have been particularly important as the Air Force wanted the resulting
explosion to be clearly visible from Earth.
As such, it was proposed that the explosion happen on the border of the visible part of
the moon, so that the resulting dust cloud would be clearly visible, being illuminated
by the sun.
The project was eventually scrapped, however, as it was felt that, while the public might
think it impressive to launch something to the moon, the fact that the U.S. was choosing
to drop a nuclear bomb on the moon would not be something generally received favorably
by the general public.
• Speaking of nuking things and the Cold War, it turns out that during the peak of
that time, the U.S. military put such an emphasis on a rapid response to an attack on American
soil, that to minimize any foreseeable delay in launching a nuclear missile, for nearly
two decades they intentionally set the launch codes at every silo in the US to, and we can’t
make this up: 00000000.
We guess the first thing we need to address is how this even came to be in the first place.
Well, in 1962 JFK signed the National Security Action Memorandum 160, which was supposed
to ensure that every nuclear weapon the US had be fitted with a Permissive Action Link
(PAL), basically a small device that ensured that the missile could only be launched with
the right code and with the right authority.
There was particularly a concern that the nuclear missiles the United States had stationed
in other countries, some of which with somewhat unstable leadership, could potentially be
seized by those governments and launched.
With the PAL system, this became much less of a problem.
Beyond foreign seizure, there was also simply the problem that many U.S. commanders had
the ability to launch nukes under their control at any time.
Just one commanding officer who wasn't quite right in the head and World War III begins.
As U.S. General Horace M. Wade stated about General Thomas Power: “I used to worry about
General Power.
I used to worry that General Power was not stable.
I used to worry about the fact that he had control over so many weapons and weapon systems
and could, under certain conditions, launch the force.
Back in the days before we had real positive control [i.e., PAL locks], SAC had the power
to do a lot of things, and it was in his hands, and he knew it.”
To give you an idea of how secure the PAL system was at this time, bypassing one was
once described as being "about as complex as performing a tonsillectomy while entering
the patient from the wrong end."
This system was supposed to be essentially hot-wire proof, making sure only people with
the correct codes could activate the nuclear weapons and launch the missiles.
However, though the devices were supposed to be fitted on every nuclear missile after
JFK issued his memorandum, the military continually dragged its heels on the matter.
In fact, it was noted that a full 20 years after JFK had order PALs be fitted to every
nuclear device, half of the missiles in Europe were still protected by simple mechanical
locks.
Most that did have the new system in place weren't even activated until 1977.
Those in the U.S. that had been fitted with the devices, such as ones in the Minuteman
Silos, were installed under the close scrutiny of Robert McNamara, JFK's Secretary of Defence.
However, The Strategic Air Command greatly resented McNamara's presence and almost as
soon as he left, the code to launch the missile's, all 50 of them, was set to 00000000.
Oh, and in case you actually did forget the code, it was handily written down on a checklist
handed out to the soldiers.
As Dr. Bruce G. Blair, who was once a Minuteman launch officer, stated:
“Our launch checklist in fact instructed us, the firing crew, to double-check the locking
panel in our underground launch bunker to ensure that no digits other than zero had
been inadvertently dialed into the panel.”
This ensured that there was no need to wait for Presidential confirmation that would have
just wasted valuable Russian nuking time.
To be fair, there was also the possibility that command centers or communication lines
could be wiped out, so having a bunch of nuclear missiles sitting around un-launchable because
nobody had the code was seen as a greater risk by the military brass than a few soldiers
simply deciding to launch the missiles without proper authorization.