News from Space

Britain's Princess Margaret climbed into a trailer parked close to the great radio telescope at Jodrell Bank, just south of Manchester, England. At a control panel was Bill Young of Los Angeles, who adjusted knobs and switches and then told the princess: "You push this button in one minute, 15 seconds." Meg waited. When Young said "Push," she touched the button marked "Execute Command." Red and white lights showed on the control panel, telling Young and Princess Meg that a radio signal had started from the radio telescope and was speeding across space at light's speed (186,300 m.p.sec.) toward U.S. sun satellite Pioneer V. 1,040,000 miles away. About 25 seconds later, Pioneer V's radio answer sounded as a wavering whine in Bill Young's trailer.

Turned on by command from Jodrell Bank or Hawaii, this eerie voice conveys information that is relayed by teletype to the Space Technology Laboratories, Los Angeles, where Pioneer V was built. There it is put on punched cards and fed into a computer. Out comes a flood of figures that STL-men interpret as the latest news about Pioneer's position and course.

Pioneer's report, after covering the first million miles of its 500 million-mile orbit around the sun: "Everything is fine." Its internal temperature is 68DEG F., slightly lower than the standard temperature of a U.S. living room. The four paddles that collect solar energy for its radio are colder: 27DEG F. Eighty-seven slight impacts from , micrometeorites and five heavier ones were registered, but nothing really damaging. Other data will take months to interpret. Eventually they will tell about cosmic rays, magnetic fields and other space conditions between the earth and the orbit of Venus.

When Vanguard I, the U.S.'s second satellite, popped into orbit early in 1958, Nikita Khrushchev derided it as a "grapefruit." It was indeed small (6.4 in. in diameter, 3.25 Ibs.). But last week, as it completed its second year in orbit, Vanguard had proved to have two virtues that the massive Soviet satellites lack. First, it soared into so high an orbit (apogee 2,500 miles above the earth, perigee 400 miles) that the outermost fringes of the atmosphere exert almost no slowing effect on its motion. It has kept going while heavier competitors sagged into the atmosphere and burned up; it has already circled the earth nearly 8,000 times, may keep up this schedule for 1,000 years.

Vanguard's second virtue is the solar battery that has kept its small radio beeping steadily, long after bigger satellites lost their voices. Tracked by its radio signals, the "grapefruit's" motions in its orbit have given invaluable information about the earth's slightly bumpy gravitational field, and about the shape of the earth itself. Last week another bit of information came down from the little satellite. There was a slight, unexplained wandering in its long-studied orbit. After much calculation, Dr. Peter Munsen and other orbit experts of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration reached their conclusion: Vanguard I was being blown off course by pressure of sunlight.

All light exerts some pressure, but not much. Even the powerful sunlight glaring in empty space has the pressure of only one billionth of a pound per square inch--roughly equivalent to the weight of two cigarettes pressing on an acre of land. But in the vacuum of space, it was enough to push Vanguard I a mile or so off course over a period of two years. Light pressure is important in astronomy; it forms the tails of comets and is probably responsible for distributing the debris of exploded stars throughout the galaxy. But not until Vanguard I had been circling for two years had it ever been detected in action on a man-made space object.

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