Project Orbiter was a proposed United Statesspacecraft, an early competitor toProject Vanguard. It was jointly run by theUnited States Army andUnited States Navy. It was ultimately rejected by the Ad Hoc Committee on Special Capabilities, which selected Project Vanguard instead. Although the project was canceled on 3 August 1955, the basic design was used for theJuno I rocket which launchedExplorer 1, the first satellite launched by the United States.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the GermanSociety for Space Travel (Verein für Raumschiffahrt, referred to asVfR by its founders) began to gain in popularity, with membership growing from outside ofGermany as well as within. The primary cause for theVfR's gaining worldwide appeal was due to the writings of mathematicianHermann Oberth who detailed, in a 1923 publication entitledThe Rocket into Interplanetary Space, themechanics of placing a satellite intoEarthorbit.[1]
Herman Potočnik was the first to publish the concept of placing ageosynchronous satellite ingeostationary orbit, in 1928.[2]Arthur C. Clarke popularized this concept even further in 1945, in a paper entitled "Extra-Terrestrial Relays — Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?", published inWireless World magazine.[3] Clarke described the concept as useful forcommunications satellites.
In 1954,Wernher von Braun proposed the idea of placing asatellite into orbit at a meeting of Spaceflight committee of theAmerican Rocket Society.[4] His plan was to use aRedstone rocket with clusters of smallsolid-fuel rockets on top.
Also in 1954, in a private discussion about theRedstone project withErnst Stuhlinger, von Braun expressed his belief that they should have a "real, honest-to-goodness scientist" involved in their little unofficial satellite project (Project Orbiter). "I'm sure you know a scientist somewhere who would fill the bill, possibly in the Nobel Prize class, willing to work with us and to put some instruments on our satellite". Stuhlinger, himself a cosmic ray researcher at theUniversity of Tübingen under his faculty advisor,Hans Geiger, had worked withJames Van Allen atWhite Sands Missile Range withV-2 rockets, was ready with his reply: "Yes, of course, I will talk to Dr. Van Allen".
Stuhlinger followed this by a visit with Van Allen at his home inPrinceton, New Jersey, where Van Allen was on sabbatical leave fromUniversity of Iowa to work onstellarator design. Van Allen later recounted, "Stuhlinger's 1954 message was simple and eloquent. By virtue of ballistic missile developments atArmy Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA), it was realistic to expect that within a year or two a small scientific satellite could be propelled into a durable orbit around the Earth.[sic] ... I expressed a keen interest in performing a worldwide survey of the cosmic-ray intensity above the atmosphere".[5]
On 26 January 1956 at the Symposium on "The Scientific Uses of Earth Satellites" at theUniversity of Michigan, sponsored by theUpper Atmosphere Research Panel,James Van Allen proposed the use of U.S. satellites for cosmic-ray investigations.Ernst Stuhlinger, from von Braun's team noted this presentation and stayed in contact with Van Allen's Iowa Group. Through "preparedness and good fortune", van Allen later wrote, the experiment was selected as the principal payload (Explorer 1) for the first flight of a four-stageJuno I rocket on 1 February 1958 (GMT).[citation needed]
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