At the start of the space race in the 1950s, professor James Van Allen and his research team at the University of Iowa were tasked with building an experiment to fly on the United States’ very first ...

The space agency reported that these new belts formed between the Earth's permanent radiation layers, known as the Van Allen Belts. Named after scientist James Van Allen, who discovered them in the ...

James is a published author with four pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary. Just beyond low-Earth orbit, the ...

A brief history lesson At the start of the space race in the 1950s, professor James Van Allen and his research team at the University of Iowa were tasked with building an experiment to fly on the ...

carried a cosmic ray detector (the satellite’s primary science instrument), which directly led to Principal Investigator Dr. James Van Allen’s discovery of radiation belts around Earth held in ...