Data from the Sputniks

While Sputniks I and II still orbit overhead, scientists around the world are racing through mountains of data to discover how information on the movements of the Russians' artificial moons has altered standard theories of the earth and its atmosphere. Last week scientists at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge suggested a drastic revision of an accepted notion of the earth's upper atmosphere: at about 137 miles altitude, the atmosphere may be almost nine times as dense as scientists once believed.

The Smithsonian scientists calculated the density of the upper atmosphere by studying the gradually shrinking orbit of Sputnik I. Under the old theory, Sputnik I should stay up for about 27 months before aerodynamic drag and gravity pull it down into air dense enough to destroy it by the heat of friction. But now the Smithsonian scientists think that the moon will set for good after only 3 1/2 months, flare into destruction sometime around the middle of January.

Even under the new theory, the earth's upper atmosphere is still nearly a vacuum. Rocketeers and missilemen, whose vehicles travel through this area at tremendous speeds, probably will have to make only minor adjustments in their plans. But if the Smithsonian's finding checks out, the perigee (minimum orbital altitude) for a long-lived satellite will have to be raised from 140 miles to 180 miles because of the decelerating drag of air particles at the lower altitude. Anticipated perigee for Vanguard: a safe 200 miles. Scientists at Washington's Carnegie Institution are still puzzling over a radio phenomenon of Sputnik I: a "ghost" signal that registered on their receivers when the artificial satellite was on the opposite side of the earth. One guess: under certain ionospheric conditions, the radio waves of Sputnik traveled back on great circle paths that somehow converged on the opposite side of the world. Suggests Carnegie's Harry W. Wells: "Energy from this concentrated area, presumably in the ionosphere, was then radiated or scattered to the receiving antennas so that the hot spot in motion appeared as a ghost satellite."

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