Stamping the Earth from Space

446 Pages·2017·53.658 MB·English

by  Renato Dicati

Renato Dicati
Stamping
the Earth from
Space
Stamping the Earth from Space

Renato Dicati
Stamping the Earth
from Space
123
RenatoDicati
Unione Stampa Filatelica Italiana
Milan
Italy
ISBN978-3-319-20755-1 ISBN978-3-319-20756-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-20756-8
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2016947474
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Preface
SinceOctober4,1957,whenthefirstartificialEarthsatellite,Sputnik1,was
launched, thousands of books and articles have been written for telling in
every detail all aspects of the history of space exploration, perhaps the
greatest adventure of human history.
There is no topic that has not been treated and it is difficult to find
anything new to say. But, despite all that has been published, there is still
place to write about space exploration in an original and enjoyable way, for
example, through philately.
This book presents an historical and philatelic overview of one of the
major topics of astronautics: the exploration of the Earth from space. It
introduces and describes in detail the research fields in which artificial
satellites,mannedspaceships,andorbitalstationshavecontributedtobuilda
new image of our planet and its environment.
Theatmosphereandionosphere,thegeomagneticfield,theradiationbelts
and magnetosphere, the weather and climate, the Earth’s resources, the
structure of the depths of the oceans and the characteristics of sea surface
environments, the shape, dimensions, and movements of the planet Earth.
Thesearesomeofthesubjectsillustratedhereinconsiderabledetailthrough
postage stamps and other postal documents for philately, issued in many
different countries throughout the world.
It is not, however, an encyclopedic work or an atlas of space exploration
basedonpostagestampsinsteadoftheusualillustrations,itisratheraseries
of data notes and discussion of the content of given stamps, cancellations,
space covers, maximum postcards and complete sets, all relating to Earth
observation from space.
The book consists of ten chapters. The first is a prologue in which we
outline the main stages of astronautics, with particular reference to human
missionsinspace.Chapter2presentssometopicsthathavebeenthesubject
ofresearchsincethelaunchofthefirstsatellites:thegeodesy,thestudyofthe
shapeandthesizeofEarthandmonitoringofslowmovementsofitssurface.
Here we limited to only consider the satellites whose mission was mainly
geodesic.Wehaveneglectedthecontributionsofnavigationandlocalization
satellitessuchastheTransitorGPSsystemsalong withothertopicssuchas
“search and rescue”andsurveillance, which can constitutetogetherwiththe
main topic of satellite communications the object of a next project.
v
vi Preface
InChap.3,wetalkabouttheenvironmentinwhichmanyofthesatellites
operate:theenvelopeofgassurroundingtheEarth,theatmosphere.Thefinal
part of the chapter deals with the most delicate part of this envelope, the
so-called ozone layer, and describes many missions that have helped scien-
tiststounderstandthephenomenonofozonedepletionandtotakemeasures
for its protection. Another highly valuable part of our atmosphere, the
ionosphere,isdiscussedinaseparatechapter.Thelargemagneticcavitythat
protects the Earth from energetic particles from the Sun and from space, the
magnetosphere, is discussed in Chap. 5 of the book. Knowledge of the
magnetosphere and its many components is one of the areas where greater
hasbeenthecontributionofsatellitesanduntilthebeginningofthespaceera
very little was known on the subject. Chapter 6 is devoted to meteorology,
oneoftheoldestandmostpopularapplicationfieldsofspaceexploration.In
the following chapter, we deal with a subject that for years has worried the
techniciansresponsiblefortheconstructionofspacevehicles,thatofcosmic
dustandmicrometeoritesthatfalltoEarthcontinuously.Today,thankstothe
observationsmadebysatellites,weknowthatthedangerposedtoastronauts
by these small bodies is very low although a mass of about 40,000 tons of
micrometeorites falls onto Earth every year.
Chapter 8 is devoted to the study of Earth’s resources from space.
Geology, monitoring ofagricultural, forestandwater resources,thestudyof
soils, the search for mineral deposits and oil, land use planning, and control
ofnaturaldisastersandenvironmentaldegradationarejustsomeofthetopics
to which the satellites give increasingly important contributions.
An additional chapter deals with the aspect of cartography and mapping
from space.
The book concludes by examining one of the most precious and delicate
elementsofourplanet:oceans.About71%oftheplanet’ssurfaceiscovered
withwater,andtheoceanscontainapproximately96.5%ofallEarth’swater.
The oceans influence almost all aspects of life on Earth, and since the early
steps of space exploration many missions have been dedicated to learning
more about the so-called sixth continent.
The ten chapters are preceded by an introduction in which we give some
technical information on stamp collecting with some topics, addressed to
non-specialists,whichaimtointroducethedifferenttypesofitemsbelonging
to philately.
Readers will appreciate the pictures of postage stamps, here all in color,
numbering over 1130. Stamps are reproduced in full scale. For graphic
reasons, the sheets, leaflets, envelopes, postcards, space covers, and special
cancellations are generally reproduced in slightly reduced scale, always
adequate,however,toensurefullunderstandingofthecaptionstobeseenin
these postal documents.
The material used to illustrate the topics comes exclusively from the
author’s collection. Obviously it would not be possible to use all the phila-
telic items that hundreds of postal authorities around the world have pro-
duced in the last seventy years to celebrate the events of the conquest of
space.
Preface vii
The author has therefore carefully chosen and studied every issue
throughout the world that could have a bearing on relevant events in the
history of Earth exploration, so as to ensure additional in-depth information
and also to highlight any links between the single chapters.
Milan, Italy Renato Dicati
Contents
1 Prologue: From Sputnik to the International
Space Station . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 The Beginning of the History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Early Artificial Satellites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Human Spaceflight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4 Living in Space: The Salyut Space Stations . . . . . . . . 11
1.5 The Skylab Space Station. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.6 The Space Shuttle, the Reusable Spaceship . . . . . . . . 18
1.7 The Mir Space Station. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.8 The International Space Station: A Permanent Base
in Earth Orbit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2 Satellite Geodesy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.1 The Shape and the Size of the Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.2 Vanguard 1 Discovers the “Pear Shape”
of the Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.3 The ANNA Program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.4 Tracking of the “Echo” Balloons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.5 Laser Satellite Ranging: Beacon Explorer
and GEOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.6 French Geodetic Satellites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.7 PAGEOS: Return to Balloons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.8 Secret Geodesy: Military Geodetic Satellites. . . . . . . . 44
2.9 Satellite Altimetry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.10 Geodynamic Satellites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.11 Gravity Sensors and Accelerometers . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3 Researches on the Atmosphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.1 Nomenclature of Atmospheric Structure. . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.2 First Observations of the Atmosphere from Space. . . . 60
3.3 The Chemical Composition of the Atmosphere. . . . . . 63
3.4 The Atmospheric Satellites of Explorer Program. . . . . 65
3.5 Atmospheric Researches with Military Satellite. . . . . . 69
3.6 The Orbiting Geophysical Observatory Program . . . . . 72
3.7 European Researches: San Marco, Ariel 3,
and Aeros Satellites. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
ix
x Contents
3.8 The Soviet Researches with Cosmos Satellites . . . . . . 78
3.9 The Second Generation of “Atmosphere Explorer”
Satellites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
3.10 Faint Phenomena in the Upper Atmosphere . . . . . . . . 86
3.10.1 The Geocorona. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
3.10.2 The Airglow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
3.10.3 Noctilucent Clouds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
3.11 Earth Radiation Budget . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.12 Observing the Atmosphere from Space Stations . . . . . 96
3.13 The Spacelab Missions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
3.14 Atmospheric Research from Mir and ISS. . . . . . . . . . 103
3.15 The Project A-Train, a Train for the Atmosphere . . . . 106
3.16 Megha-Tropiques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
3.17 Observations of Atmospheric Ozone . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
4 Ionospheric Research with Satellites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
4.1 A Glance at Ionosphere. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
4.2 First Observations from Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
4.3 Alouette, the First Topside Sounder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
4.4 Explorer 20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
4.5 ISIS (International Satellites
for Ionospheric Studies). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
4.6 The Soviet Ionospheric Satellites. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
4.7 The Intercosmos Program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
4.8 Other National Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
4.9 The Aurora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
4.10 Physics of the Aurora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
4.11 The Observation of Aurora from Space . . . . . . . . . . . 142
5 Exploration of the Earth’s Magnetosphere. . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
5.1 The Earth’s Magnetic Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
5.2 Satellite Studies of Geomagnetism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
5.3 The Van Allen Radiation Belts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
5.4 The Third Radiation Belt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
5.5 The Solar Wind and the Magnetosphere. . . . . . . . . . . 163
5.6 The Exploration of the Magnetosphere. . . . . . . . . . . . 164
5.7 Exploration of the Radiation Belts—the Soviet
Programs Electron. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
5.8 The Ring Current . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
5.9 First European Programs: HEOS and GEOS. . . . . . . . 179
5.10 The International Sun-Earth Explorer (ISEE) . . . . . . . 181
5.11 Active Experiments in Space: The AMPTE Project. . . 184
5.12 The Intercosmos Programs for the Study of the
Magnetosphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
5.13 The Interbol Missions: New Models
of Magnetosphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
5.14 Soviet–French Cooperation: The ARAKS
and Arcade Experiments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198