Just received the spaceref.com post and see the announcement that Dr. Van Allen died today.

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THE DAY IN SPACE
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In today's space news from SpaceRef:

-- U.S. Space Pioneer, UI Professor James A. Van Allen Dies
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=20565

"Dr. James A. Van Allen, U.S. space pioneer and Regent Distinguished Professor of Physics in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, died this morning, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2006 at the age of 91. Arrangements are pending."

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The last instrument working on Pioneer 10 was the Geiger Tube Telescope of Dr. Van Allen.
http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/pioneer/
http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/pioneer/gtt.html
http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/pioneer/gtt.jpg
http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/pioneer/p10.html

http://spaceprojects.arc.nasa.gov/Space_Projects/pioneer/PNStat.html


Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsltr.: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
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THE DAY IN SPACE
__________________
In today's space news from SpaceRef:

-- U.S. Space Pioneer, UI Professor James A. Van Allen Dies
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.nl.html?pid=20565

"Dr. James A. Van Allen, U.S. space pioneer and Regent Distinguished Professor of Physics in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, died this morning, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2006 at the age of 91. Arrangements are pending."

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http://www.press-citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060809/NEWS01/60809004/1079

Wednesday, August 9, 2006
James Van Allen dies
By the Press-Citizen

James Van Allen, a pioneer in space physics and longtime University of Iowa professor, died early this morning at University Hospitals, UI interim president Gary Fethke announced today.

Reading from a prepared statement, Fethke said until his death, Van Allen remained an active member of the faculty.

"We and I will miss him greatly," said an obviously shaken Fethke, his voice quivering, before the opening of the Iowa state Board of Regents meeting this morning in Iowa City. "We extend our sympathies to the Van Allen family."

Regents president Michael Gartner called Van Allen "an Iowa treasure."

"It's a sad day," he said.

Regent Bob Downer of Iowa City proposed the board issue a proclamation to recognize Van Allen's contributions to UI and the scientific community and to express sympathies to the Van Allen family.

Van Allen was responsible for no less than getting the United States into the space race at a time when the nation was terrified that the Soviet Union would conquer us from above.

It was Oct. 4, 1957, when the USSR launched Sputnik, a 183-pound, basketball-sized satellite that became the first man-made object in Earth orbit.

The Soviets' triumph struck fear in the heart of the United States, and the government immediately took action not only to bolster its own efforts to reach space, but to improve math and science education in public schools.

Van Allen was hailed as a national hero when the United States struck back.
This line is from the NASA article "Sputnik and the Dawn of the Space Age:"

"On January 31, 1958, the tide changed, when the United States successfully launched Explorer I. This satellite carried a small scientific payload that eventually discovered the magnetic radiation belts around the Earth, named after principal investigator James Van Allen. The Explorer program continued as a successful ongoing series of lightweight, scientifically useful spacecraft."

The Van Allen Belts, as they are now known, remain a crucial area of study in space science, as evidenced by a recently announced, $100 million NASA project to study the effect of the belts on satellite communications and global navigation systems. The University of Iowa is the lead institution of the study.

The fact that UI remains at the forefront of space research is a testament to Van Allen as a teacher. As impressive as his own work is the work of UI space scientists Don Gurnett, Louis Frank and others who were all Van Allen protogés. Now, most of the university's top work is being conducted by a third generation of UI-grown space scientists.

Van Allen was born Sept. 7, 1914, to Alfred Morris and Alma Olney Van Allen in Mount Pleasant, the second of four sons. In an article originally published in 1990 entitled, “What Is A Space Scientist? An Autobiographical Example,” Van Allen described his family as “closely knit” and having “a strong resemblance to that of earlier pioneer families.”

After graduating from high school, Van Allen stayed at home for college, attending Iowa Wesleyan College in Mount Pleasant. One of his professors, Thomas Poulter, sensed an interest in physics and the study of space in his young student and enlisted his help with his own study of meteors and cosmic rays.

While an undergraduate at Iowa Wesleyan, he assisted the senior scientist of the second Byrd Expedition (1934-35) to Antarctica in preparing seismic and magnetic experimental equipment. In 2004, the American Polar Society commemorated his work by presenting Van Allen with its Honors of the Society award.

In 1932, Van Allen, working in conjunction with a researcher at the University of Iowa, helped map the meteor trails of the Perseid Meteor Showers. He also made a magnetic survey of Mount Pleasant and measured cosmic rays at ground level.

Van Allen completed his studies at Iowa Wesleyan and moved on to do graduate work in nuclear physics at Iowa, a school he described as “my family university.” He got his degree in 1939.

During World War II, Van Allen worked for the Navy developing proximity shells at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

After the war, Van Allen returned to his real passion: the study of cosmic rays. A cache of almost 100 captured German V-2 rockets allowed the most sophisticated study of the cosmos possible up to that time. Van Allen traveled to White Sands, N.M., where he built intricate instruments for the rockets that could fly up to 100 miles above the earth. That work began to establish Van Allen’s reputation as an expert in rockets and the study of space.

Then, in 1950, Van Allen got a call from Dewey Stuit, the new dean of liberal arts and sciences at the University of Iowa. Stuit needed to find a new head for the physics department and Van Allen was at the top of his list.

James and Abigail Van Allen came to the university in 1951 and lived at first in the converted Army barracks that were next to the football stadium.
He also arrived to a department with a very limited research budget.

Nevertheless, it was an exciting time to be studying physics. The government was looking for experiments and equipment to be launched aboard a future satellite. Most of the experiments received were designed for the Navy’s Vanguard rockets. Van Allen, however, designed his experiment to fit on either the Vanguard or the Army’s Jupiter rocket. That decision proved prescient when the government selected the Jupiter to launch Explorer I.

Soon after that launch, Van Allen and his students began work on Explorer II and Explorer III, which eventually led to the discovery of the belts that bear his name. His work prompted President Eisenhower to invite the Van Allens to the White House, and on May 4, 1959, Van Allen was on the cover of Time magazine.

“In the race into space, the Russians can claim bigger satellites and more powerful rockets,” Time declared. “If the U.S. can retort that it has a big lead in scientific achievement, the man most responsible is James Van Allen, whose instruments, designed and largely constructed in his basement laboratory, brought back from space discoveries the Russians never made.”

Later, Van Allen also built instruments for Mariners I and II, which flew by Venus; Mariner IV, which explored Mars; and Pioneers 10 and 11, the first human-made spacecraft to reach Jupiter and Saturn.

In his later years, he became known as a staunch critic of human spaceflight, arguing that the cost and the dangers to human life were too high, and all research of any real value could be conducted by machinery and robots.

NASA heard the call. In the 1990s, the administration put a greater emphasis on smaller, cheaper, unmanned missions that yielded greater science and were seen as less of a failure if something went wrong.

That attitude led to the incredibly successful Mars Pathfinder missions, and severe public criticism of the costly International Space Station and President Bush's call for a manned mission to Mars.

Van Allen also was a critic of the space shuttle program. Following problems that plagued the July 2005 flight of the shuttle Discovery and in the wake of the February 2003 destruction of the Columbia shuttle, Van Allen described the program as “too expensive and dangerous.”

“It’s a vastly difficult effort with almost no significant purpose,” Van Allen told The Associated Press.

His list of honors is long and distinguished:

• In 1974 People Magazine listed Van Allen as one of the top 10 teaching college professors in the country. His former graduate students list among their accomplishments experiments on NASA's Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, Galileo and Cassini spacecraft.

• Van Allen joined the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in 1948 and served as the organization's president from 1982 until 1984. He has received the AGU's highest honors, including the John A. Fleming Award in 1963 for eminence in geophysics and the William Bowie Medal in 1977 for outstanding contributions to fundamental geophysics and for unselfish cooperation in research.

• In 1994, Van Allen received the 1994 Gerard P. Kuiper Prize from the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society "in recognition of his many contributions to the field of planetary science, both through his investigations of planetary magnetospheres and through his advocacy of planetary exploration." Also in 1994, he was presented with a lifetime achievement award by NASA on the occasion of his 80th birthday and the American Geophysical Union's 75th anniversary.

• Van Allen's many other awards and honors include membership in the National Academy of Sciences since 1959 and the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest honor for scientific achievement, presented in 1987 by President Reagan in ceremonies at the White House. In 1989, he received the Crafoord Prize, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm and presented by the King of Sweden. The Crafoord Prize is the highest award the Academy can bestow for research in a number of scientific fields and, for space exploration, is the equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Services for Van Allen have yet to be announced. He is survived by his wife, Abigail Fithian Halsey II Van Allen, his five children -- Cynthia Van Allen Schaffner of New York City; Dr. Margot Van Allen Cairns of Vancouver, British Columbia; Sarah Van Allen Trimble of Princeton, N.J.; Thomas Van Allen of Aspen, Colo.; and Peter Van Allen of Philadelphia -- and seven grandchildren.

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http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/on-line.html

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4210/pages/Cover.htm
LUNAR IMPACT A History of Project Ranger http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4210/pages/Info.htm#I_Top
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4210/pages/TOC.htm
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4210/pages/Ch_1.htm#Ch1_H2
Snip
The data returned by Pioneer 3's radiation experiments, and the discovery of the second radiation shell, heightened scientific interest in charged particles in near-earth space all the more. A few weeks later, in early 1959, James Van Allen and his associate George Ludwig of the State University of Iowa urged that their radiation package be flown again in place of the television system on Pioneer 4 to obtain more radiation data and to further refine information already secured. "We happened to have," a JPL official later explained, "a bonanza in the original Explorer by carrying Van Allen's experiment along and obtaining so much information. You just couldn't go wrong by proposing to gain more information of that type for the next several years." 21 Space officials approved the change. Pioneer
4 would also be launched on a lunar flyby trajectory rather than on a circumlunar trajectory for photographic purposes, so as to measure radiation between the earth and the moon. 22 Snip

[The discovery of the now named Van Allen Radiation belts helped start a long history of the use of Dr. Van Allen's radiation instruments. - LRK -]

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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

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