i,:,; .. .:. ht.RALD, Ntwpot t News, Mon., Dec. 21, 196~ 1 -l

EXPLORER 26 SATELLITE LAUNCHED.

Soars Into Orbit On Space Radiation Measuring Missio11 By HOWARD BENEDICT

CAPE KENNEDY, Fla. CAP> - The Explorer 26 satellite soared into orbit today to meas­m·e space radiation and the threat it poses to men and ma­chinery flying deep into space.

'file 101-pound windmill-shaped satellite shot aloft from Cape Kennedy . at 4 ·a.m. aboard a towering Delta rocket which blazed brilliantly into the pre­dawn darkness.

The flight control center an· nounc>Jd an hour later that tracking information indicated all three sta~es of the booster had fired with precision and drilled the payload into space.

Launch director Robert Gray said that "everything s~ms to be working just as expected.

Explorer 26 was aimed at a looping _course i.."ltended to take it 15,800 miles away from earth before it swings back as close as 200 miles at the low point of its orb:t.

Becau:;e of the eccentric path sought, the satellite was to make one global circuit every sevozn hours.

'Officials said it would require several hours to determine ac­curate orbital figures.

The newest in a long line of Explorer satellites is to carry on work ~t.arted by its predeces­sors in probing basic scientific mysteries of space.

Tire Explorer experiments were designed to provide the most extensive information yet on how high energy radiation particles become trapped in too earth's magnetic field to form the Van Allen belt and the dan­ger the belt poses to men and machin>Jry flying future flights deep into space.

The satellite, whose four checkerboard-sizoz solar cell panels give it the appearance of a windmill spinning through space, was aimed at the egg­shaped orbit so that it would cover the most inten~e radiation area of the Van Allen band and also the heaviest concentration of particiles still left from a U.S. high altitude ·nuclear explo­sion. The nuclear blast, called

Project Starfish, was conducted

owr the Pacific Ocean July 9, 1962.

The Van Allen region extends from about 600 miles to more than 40,000 miles above the ozarth. The heart of the Starfish belt is about 2,000 miles high.

The man-made belt is decay­ing rapidly and study of how it does so may provide scientists with clues to the behavior of the Van Allen particles. Data will oo compared with that obtained by the Explorer 15 satellite which was launched two years ago specifically to probe the Starfish area.

The process by which elec­trons and protons are trapp:!d in the earth's m'agnetic field is not known. Scientists theorize the

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