Word: solar
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...which might be a transmitter designed to broadcast its voice over thousands of miles of empty space. Near it was what looked like a cylinder of dirty pink soap. It was plastic foam, encasing apparatus that might be destined to orbit the sun until the end of the solar system. Puffing on a battered pipe, Van Allen peered, commented, sketched an idea for a new circuit, then was summoned to take a long-distance call from the Army's rocket lab in Huntsville, Ala. So the day began...
...Allen's immediate interests is a 20-lb. satellite scheduled for launching next fall. If all goes well, it will settle into a slim, elliptical orbit, soaring out six earth radii (24.000 miles) at apogee. It should stay up for hundreds of years, and it will have solar batteries to keep its radio voices alive for a long time. Its duty will be to report continuously on the radiation belt, study how it is affected by sunspots and other solar eruptions. Its fluctuations may have important effects on the earth's weather...
...point in such a probe unless radio communication can be maintained across 25 million miles, the nearest approach of Venus. Transmission over this distance requires a lot of power. Chemical batteries are too feeble. Nuclear-powered batteries are promising but have not been developed sufficiently. The best bet is solar cells, which capture energy from sunlight...
...mosaic of cells made of thin sheets of a photoelectric material (probably silicon) that turns sunlight into electricity. The paddles will be folded when the satellite is in the nose of its launching rocket and will snap into position as soon as it is spaceborne. The array of solar batteries is expected to develop as much as 400 watts, about enough to run a small toaster. Most of the energy will be stored in nickel-cadmium batteries. When triggered by a signal from the earth, the batteries will power the satellite's radio transmitter...
...Venus, but will follow a long elliptical orbit that will take it about 30,000 miles from the earth. It will carry various instruments, but its principal job will be to answer promptly when spoken to. If all goes well, it will draw on its stored solar power and speak in a loud radio voice. Then its designers can judge whether a transmitter of this type can be made loud enough to be heard from Venus...