ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. –The Space Race began when the first satellite, Sputnik I, was launched by the Soviet Union, on October 4, 1957. The first government installation in the United States to detect and record the Russian signals was the Deal Test Area, a satellite campus of Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.
A total of 273 orbits of Sputnik I were observed and recorded, covering approximately 500 hours of continuous monitoring. The Army had acquired the Deal site in 1953 for use by the Signal Corps.
A summary of the Sputnik I launch was provided by the Signal Engineering Laboratories in October 1957. During what was dubbed “The International Geophysical Year,” (IGY) which was actually an 18-month period that started 1 July 1957, both the United States and the Soviet Union were assigned responsibilities for the development of satellite launching activities for research purposes.
While the U.S. was providing continuous updates on its progress, the Soviet Union was less forthcoming, though they had provided the frequencies assigned to their developing satellite project. The launch on October 4 was a surprise to the IGY body, and the Soviets later described the launch as an experiment rather than an official IGY project. But Fort Monmouth offices had begun planning to continuously monitor the 20 and 40 megacycle bands once those had been announced. That advanced planning allowed some individuals to spring into action upon hearing the news broadcasts about the satellite launch.
Dr. Harold Zahl, Fort Monmouth’s Director of Research, later reported that “we had no legal project set up for tracking Russian satellites…but within our own laboratory, we had an immediate potential, and duty called desperately.” He recalled that a “small select group of Signal Corps R&D personnel at Fort Monmouth,” eventually dubbed the “Royal Order of Sputnik Chasers,” vowed to work without overtime pay 24 hours a day, seven days a week tracking the Soviet satellite.
Dr. Zahl also provided the first known audio tape recording of Sputnik I, recorded at the home of Mr. Edward Rich, where radio transmitter and receiver equipment had been installed for communications with a meteorological rocket firing program associated with the International Geophysical Year. The recording of repeating “beep-beeps” was made of Sputnik’s 5th and 6th orbits.
The Signal Corps community had already been involved since at least 1955 with general planning for the creation of an earth satellite. The Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories, located at the Evans Signal Laboratory in Belmar, New Jersey, issued a report in January 1956 detailing the research instrumentation that should be included in an earth satellite vehicle. Within a year of Sputnik I, the Fort Monmouth community could claim contributions to the first U.S. satellites, including Vanguard I and SCORE (Signal Communications via Orbiting Relay Experiment), which were both launched in 1958. Vanguard II was launched in 1959.
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