U.S. Saw Sputnik From SCSU Campus

By John Burgeson, Connecticut Post, Bridgeport

Oct. 5–NEW HAVEN — On a cool October morning a half-century ago, two men and a teenager, standing on the roof of a building of the New Haven State Teachers College, were the first in the United States to witness Sputnik I orbiting overhead.

Thursday marked the 50th anniversary of the Soviet satellite that’s credited with launching the space age. One little-known fact is that no one living in the 48 states had seen the shiny basketball-sized orbiter until it was witnessed by James Plato, Robert Brown and Brown’s 15-year-old son, Richard, while standing on the roof of the college’s Engleman Hall on Oct. 10, 1957, according to school officials.

The fact will become better-known Wednesday when officials at Southern Connecticut State University — as the Teachers College is now known — will unveil a plaque outside Engleman Hall that will mark the historic space sighting. The unveiling will follow the symposium, “Sputnik: A Part of Southern and World History,” that will take place at 12:25 p.m. in the hall.

Richard Brown, the last surviving member of the trio, will speak at the forum, which will delve into both the scientific and sociological significance of the first man-made satellite.

The 183-pound Sputnik I caught America off-guard. At the time, the U.S. lacked the capability to launch a similar satellite into orbit. The Soviets struck another blow to U.S. ego the following month, launching a much heavier Sputnik II on Nov. 3 1957, this time carrying a dog, Laika.

The dog, reportedly rescued from a Moscow animal shelter, did not survive her adventure for more than a few hours owing to an overheated cabin. But she proved that large animals, and perhaps humans, could survive in space.

The first successful U.S. satellite, Explorer I, was launched Jan. 31, 1958, and proved the existence of the Van Allen Belts, made of charged particles trapped in the Earth’s magnetic field.

Also speaking at next week’s forum will be SCSU Earth Sciences Department Chairman James Fullmer, and assistant sociology professor Greg Adams. The event is open to the public.

Fullmer said that the Soviet newspaper Pravda had only a minor mention of Sputnik’s launch. “They only had a small headline in the day after.”

But, he added, “after they saw that the whole world was excited about it, they ran a huge story the next day.”

Still, Fullmer said that Sputnik’s orbit was tilted for maximum public relations effect. “While more difficult to achieve, the orbit took it over all of the world’s population centers,” he said.

The spacecraft was of considerable scientific value, too. Fullmer said that it had a micrometeorite detector and it could be used to determine how radio waves propagate from an orbiting spacecraft. Also, by observing the decay of its orbit, scientists could determine the thickness of the atmosphere at orbital altitudes.

At the time of the Sputnik I sighting, Plato was an amateur astronomer and an engineer for the Southern New England Telephone Co. Robert Brown was an astronomer at the college. Richard Brown, then a student at Milford High School, later graduated from SCSU in 1965. Today, he’s an electronics engineer in Lawrence, Mass.

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