Beacon was one of America's first satellite programs. A

balloon satellite A balloon satellite is inflated with gas after it has been put into orbit. It is also occasionally referred to as a "satelloon", which is a trademarked name owned by Gilmore Schjeldahl's G.T. Schjeldahl Company. List of balloon satellites abb ...

, its objective was to study atmospheric density at its orbital altitude and to be the first United States satellite visible to the naked eye. Booster problems caused both orbital attempts to end in failure.

Background

Beacon was an

International Geophysical Year The International Geophysical Year (IGY; french: Année géophysique internationale) was an international scientific project that lasted from 1 July 1957 to 31 December 1958. It marked the end of a long period during the Cold War when scientific ...

(IGY) satellite program developed by the

National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) was a United States federal agency founded on March 3, 1915, to undertake, promote, and institutionalize aeronautical research. On October 1, 1958, the agency was dissolved and its assets ...

Space Vehicle Group at

Langley Langley may refer to: People * Langley (surname), a common English surname, including a list of notable people with the name * Dawn Langley Simmons (1922–2000), English author and biographer * Elizabeth Langley (born 1933), Canadian perfor ...

under aeronautical engineer William James O'Sullivan, Jr. O'Sullivan held the belief that measuring the air density at orbital altitudes would be of critical importance to a space agency and that a simple balloon satellite, several meters in diameter, would be well suited to the task as their relatively large size and low mass make them especially sensitive to air drag effects. After the Soviets launched the first artificial satellite,

Sputnik 1 Sputnik 1 (; see § Etymology) was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for t ...

, on October 4, 1957, a high priority was placed on orbiting an American satellite that would be visible from the ground. O'Sullivan's balloon satellite would accomplish that purpose, as, once in orbit, it would be as bright as a third or fourth magnitude star, enabling easy optical and photographic tracking. This brightness led to the satellite being called "Beacon." Osullivan

Spacecraft

Beacon was an uninstrumented, inflatable 3.66 meter (12 ft) diameter sphere made of laminated mylar polyester film, 25 micrometers in thickness, and coated on both sides with an 11 micrometer-thick layer of aluminum foil. Before inflation, it folded into a cylindrical package with a mass of 4.2 kg (9.26 lbs). The package was installed into the bottom of the stainless steel payload casing mounted at the top of its rocket. An ejection piston device with a 15-pound spring would push the payload casing away from the motor after burnout. Within the casing was a connecting valve, bellows, a pressurizing nitrogen bottle, and a squib-actuated valve to inflate the sphere. Above this was the transmitter operating on the IGY standard frequency of 108.03 MHz, powered by 8 mercury batteries.

Flights

Four suborbital inflation tests were flown on two-stage

Nike-Cajun The Nike-Cajun was a two-stage sounding rocket built by combining a Nike base stage with a Cajun upper stage. The Nike-Cajun was known as a CAN for Cajun And Nike. The Cajun was developed from the Deacon rocket. It retained the external size, shap ...

sounding rockets A sounding rocket or rocketsonde, sometimes called a research rocket or a suborbital rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The rockets are used to ...

in 1958 from

Wallops Island Wallops Island is a island in Accomack County, Virginia, part of the Virginia Barrier Islands that stretch along the eastern seaboard of the United States of America. It is just south of Chincoteague Island, a popular tourist destination. W ...

. Beacon 1 (often called "Explorer 6") was launched on October 24, 1958, at 3:21 am UTC by a

Juno 1 The Juno I was a four-stage American space launch vehicle, used to launch lightweight payloads into low Earth orbit. The launch vehicle was used between January 1958 to December 1959. The launch vehicle was a member of the Redstone launch veh ...

from Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 5 in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket fell apart in mid-flight: at 112 seconds after launch, the Beacon payload broke away from the vehicle; stages 2 and 3 broke off at 149.9 seconds. The payload fell into the Atlantic Ocean 424 seconds after launch. Total flight time for the first stage was 526 seconds. This launch marked the final flight of the Juno 1 rocket. After a successful suborbital test on January 21, 1959 that lofted a Beacon to 125km in altitude, Beacon 2 was launched from Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 26 on August 15, 1959, at 00:31:00.7 UT on a three-staged

Juno 2 Juno II was an American Launch vehicle, space launch vehicle used during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was derived from the PGM-19 Jupiter, Jupiter missile, which was used as the first stage. Development Solid rocket motors derived fro ...

(the booster normally comprised four stages; a fourth stage was not required as Beacon 2 would return data on air density from a low orbit.) Headed northeast for orbit on a 48 degree azimuth, the rocket ran into trouble three minutes into the flight, at about the time of first stage cutoff. A series of tracking flares was to be ejected from the guidance. Only the first one was observed to have fired. The guidance compartment, now separated from the first stage, depressurized 23 seconds later, probably from ignition of the remaining tracking flares within the compartment. The guidance and control system then failed, causing the upper stages to fire in the wrong direction, and Beacon 2 fell short of orbit.

Legacy

Though Beacon never successfully orbited, it did play an important role in the establishment of NACA's successor agency,

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

. On April 22, 1958, before the House Select Committee on Science and Astronautics, NACA Director Hugh Dryden explained, among many other things, how large aluminized balloons could be inflated in orbit and used for communication tests. O'Sullivan elaborated on this point, impressing the Congressmen by inflating a full-size Beacon satellite and asserting that much larger balloon spacecraft could easily be developed.

Project Echo Project Echo was the first passive communications satellite experiment. Each of the two American spacecraft, launched in 1960 and 1964, were metalized balloon satellites acting as passive reflectors of microwave signals. Communication sign ...

, a direct successor of Beacon, was developed by O'Sullivan's team and launched in 1960.

Status

A model of the Beacon package installed in the final stage of a Juno rocket can be found at the National Air and Space Museum.

Table of Launches

References

{{Orbital launches in 1959 Balloon satellites 1958 in spaceflight 1959 in spaceflight Spacecraft launched in 1958 Spacecraft launched in 1959 Satellites of the United States