EXPLORING THE UNIVERSE
a few tens of metres at a top speed of below 100 kilome-
tres per hour (60 miles per hour), but it was the direct
ancestor of the spacecraft of today.
A few years later a German team, including Wernher
von Braun, set up a ‘rocket-flying field’ outside Berlin
and began experimenting. They made progress, and the
Nazi Government stepped in, transferring the rocket
workers to Peenemünde, an island in the Baltic, and
ordering them to produce military weapons. The result
was the V2, used to bombard England in the last stages
of the war (1944–5). Subsequently, von Braun and many
other Peenemünde scientists went to America, and were
largely responsible for the launching of the first United
States artificial satellite, Explorer 1, in 1958. But by then
the Russians had already ushered in the Space Age. On
4 October 1957 they sent up the first of all man-made
moons, Sputnik 1, which carried little on board apart from
a radio transmitter, but which marked the beginning of a
new era.
Remarkable progress has been made since 1957.
Artificial satellites and space stations have been put into
orbit; men have reached the Moon; unmanned probes
have been sent past all the planets apart from Pluto, and
controlled landings have been made on the surfaces of
Mars, Venus and a small asteroid, Eros. Yet there are still
people who question the value of space research. They
forget – or choose to ignore – the very real benefits to
meteorology, physics, chemistry, medical research and
many other branches of science, quite apart from the prac-
tical value of modern communications satellites.
Moreover, space research is truly international.Principle of the rocket
The liquid-propellant
rocket uses a ‘fuel’ and
an ‘oxidant’; these are
forced into a combustion
chamber, where they
react together, burning
the fuel. The gas
produced is sent out
from the exhaust; and
as long as gas continues
to stream out, so therocket will continue to fly.
It does not depend upon
having atmosphere aroundit, and is at its best in
outer space, where there
is no air-resistance. Launch of Ulysses.
Ulysses, the spacecraft
designed to survey the poles
of the Sun, was launched
from Cape Canaveral on
6 October 1990; the probe
itself was made in Europe.
The photograph here shows
the smoke trail left by the
departing spacecraft. Wernher von Braun, who
master-minded the launch
of the first US artificial
satellite, Explorer 1. Russian rocket launch- This photograph
was taken from Baikonur,
the Russian equivalent of
Cape Canaveral. It shows
a Progress unmanned
rocket just before launch;
it was sent as a supply
vehicle to the orbiting
Mir space station.
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