60 years ago, Explorer 1 launched U.S. into Space Age

Maj. Gen. John Medaris was not amused.

Nearly four months earlier, the Soviet Union had stunned the world with the launch of Sputnik 1, the first man-made satellite, on Oct. 4, 1957. Sputnik 2, carrying a dog named Laika, followed one month later.

The United States’ attempt to match the feat that December had ended in embarrassment: A Navy Vanguard rocket rose just four feet off its Cape Canaveral pad before falling back to the ground and exploding.

Now the Army Ballistic Missile Agency’s Juno I rocket — developed by Wernher von Braun at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama — was poised to launch the 30-pound Explorer 1 science satellite from Complex 26A on Jan. 29, 1958.

But John Meisenheimer, the mission’s weather officer, had unwelcome news for Medaris: The forecast was no-go.

“I got cussed out very well,” Meisenheimer recalled last week.

His calculations showed a window of opportunity opening two days later on Friday, Jan. 31, when powerful high-altitude winds no longer would risk blowing the 70-foot rocket off course.

“They accepted the forecast, and as you all know, it was a very successful launch late that evening,” said Meisenheimer, 84, of Orlando.

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On Wednesday at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Meisenheimer and four other members of the Explorer 1 launch team helped unveil a historic marker celebrating the mission that 60 years earlier launched the United States into the Space Race.

Less than three hours later, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from the Cape and placed a satellite in orbit — the 3,568th rocket launched from the Eastern Range, according to its director, Air Force Brig. Gen. Wayne Monteith, commander of the 45th Space Wing.

“Not at all bad considering how we began,” he said. “We may have gotten off to a bit of a fiery start at the beginning, but here we are now leading the world.”

The Explorer 1 mission took “the dreams and aspirations of the nation into space,” added Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana, who flew four space shuttle missions.

Built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and flown months before President Dwight Eisenhower formally established NASA, Explorer 1's primary instrument was a cosmic ray detector.

The first American satellite immediately made a breakthrough, confirming the existence of bands of radiation trapped by Earth’s magnetic field, later named the Van Allen belts after the instrument’s lead scientist.

"With the launch of Explorer 1, science moved into space," said Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, in an agency video.

Explorer 1 transmitted data for 105 days before its batteries died. It fell from orbit and burned up in the atmosphere in 1970.

For Meisenheimer, then a 24-year-old Air Force lieutenant and University of Chicago graduate, there were no computers to help produce an accurate weather forecast.

“We had great facilities here at the Cape,” he joked. “Their weather equipment was a desk and a telephone.”

A Snark cruise missile’s successful launch on Oct. 31, 1957, on a 5,000-mile flight toward Ascension Island in the South Atlantic had provided “a little relief that we were doing something positive here,” he said.

But by late-January 1958, pressure on the Explorer 1 launch team intensified.

“There was pressure on me to change my forecast, to my face and behind my back,” he recalled.

Medaris had made his displeasure at weather delays clear. Meisenheimer also received a call from Maj. Gen. Donald Yates, the range commander and himself a meteorologist who had advised Eisenhower on the D-Day invasion.

“Lieutenant, what’s going on?” Yates asked. “People are asking me why we’re holding up the satellite?”

Meisenheimer explained his forecast, and was relieved when Yates said he understood and to call it like he saw it.

The mission successfully blasted off at 10:48 p.m. Jan. 31, 1958, in the window Meisenheimer had provided.

“We have firmly established our foothold in space,” von Braun announced afterward. “We will never give it up.”

On Wednesday, Cabana, Monteith and Ray Sands, chair of the Air Force Space and Missile Museum Foundation, pulled the cover off a historic marker commemorating the Explorer 1 launch.

They were joined by Meisenheimer and fellow launch team members Ed Fannin, Terry Greenfield, Carl Jones and Ike Rigell.

“We remember the remarkable accomplishments of those who led our space program at its inception, and thank them for their legacy of exploration,” said Cabana. “And we look forward to another 60 years of discovery and exploration as we continue to establish a presence in our solar system beyond our home planet.”

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/FlameTrench.