The Space Age: Abstracts
This issue appears a little more than 50 years after the launch of Sputnik-1, the first artificial satellite of our planet.
The authors, witnesses and actors of the first half-century of human activities in space, give personal assessments
of some highlights of those activities. Practically from the beginning, the scientific and technical communities of
France have played a major role in international space research, with important contributions by CNRS personnel.
France is today one of the world’s leading actors in space scientific research, on its own, in the framework of the
European Space Agency, and in bilateral cooperation not only with the United States and the Russian Federation,
but also with India, Japan, and other countries.
The beginning of the space age is usually taken as October 4, 1957, when Sputnik-1 was successfully launched. In
his article, Robert Kandel provides some aspects of the historical background from Copernicus and Newton to
Tsiolkovsky, and the twentieth-century milestones on the road to Sputnik. As he notes, what might have been just
another aspect of scientific research in the context of the International Geophysical Year, became a front-page story
with enormous impact on world public opinion and on the subsequent course of the arms race between the U.S.
and the U.S.S.R. Kandel concludes with a note on his personal implication in the use of instruments on artificial
satellites to measure the Earth’s radiation balance, a fundamental aspect of climate research.
Roger Maurice Bonnet, Director of the International Space Science Institute and former Director of Scientific
Programmes at the European Space Agency, provides a general review of space research over the 50 years since
Sputnik, in particular with the development of international scientific cooperation against the background of Soviet-
U.S. competition, and with the growth and maturation of European space research. He also bears witness to his
personal experience and contribution to the first observations of our Sun from space. After presenting some of the
highlights of space observations – of the Earth and other planets, of the stars and the universe, he concludes with
a discussion of what should be our priorities for the next 50 years of the space age.
Jacques Blamont, who played a leading role in the development of space research in France and in the active cooperation
between France and the United States on the one hand, between France and the Soviet Union of the other, presents an
eyewitness history of how space policy developed in France. His story begins with the liberation of France from German occupation,
continues (after several dozen V-2 impacts in France in fall 1944) with the first French rocket experiments in the
1950s, and then describes in some detail how, with the support of President Charles de Gaulle, the decision was taken to
move ahead at full speed into the space age, establishing a national space agency (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales)
while maintaining and encouraging scientific research using space at CNRS and university laboratories.
Anny Cazenave, a pioneer in space geodesy and director of the Laboratory for Research in Space Geophysics and
Oceanography (LEGOS) in Toulouse, shows how, thanks to the use of artificial satellites as test probes of the Earth’s
gravitational field, together with space altimetry, it has been possible to determine seafloor topography and to measure
continental drift and sea-level rise, and even seasonal fluctuations of ground water, an important and until
recently very poorly known component of the water cycle.
R.K.
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