"SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN, Satellites and the Beginning of the Space Age"
Copyright:Copernicus/Springer Verlag (New York)
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Book description.
The twelfth meeting of the TPESP, on October 3, 1957, the eve of the launch of Sputnik, opened with a discussion about how to track a Russian satellite. Fred Whipple explained delays in development of the cameras for optical tracking. It was during this meeting that the delays in delivery of the cameras prompted Richard Porter to say, "I have a number of times threatened to go up to Stanford and beat on tables. ... Fred [Whipple] has so far frankly discouraged my doing so."
At the thirteenth meeting of the TPESP, on October 22, 1957, it was reported that delivery of optics from Perkin Elmer had been increased and brought forward.
The fifteenth meeting of the TPESP, on January 7,1958, demonstrates the poverty of information about the Sputniks' orbits. Whipple said, "We've not had a scrap of radio information." Richard Porter, who headed the panel, said, "We may have underestimated again the difficulty of tracking and photography." Pickering said, "The Soviet thing caught everyone off base" (page 34).
That the Soviets were also conducting the same basic science experiments and were interested in ionospheric refraction, tracking, and propagation effects comes from Selected Translations from Soviet-Bloc International Geophysical Year Literature. Artificial Earth Satellite Observations (New York, U.S. Joint Publication Research Services, 1959) and Selected Reports Presented fry the USSR at the Fifth Meeting of the Special Committee for the International Geophysical Year (New York, U.S. Joint Publication Research Services, 1958).
Details of the optical tracking program can be found in the annual report of the SAO for 1961 and 1963.
Green and Lomask (Vanguard - A History, NASA History series SP4202 describe John Mengel's actions when Sputnik was launched (page 35).
Navigation section
Individuals interviewed for the navigation section are as follows:
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