2-860-692 - Heritage Space/Heritage Images

American physicist James Van Allen with Pioneer 4, USA, 1950s. Professor James Van Allen of the University of Iowa is best known for his discoverery in 1958 of the two belts of charged particles in the Earth's magnetosphere which are named after him. He also designed the cosmic ray detector experiment on JPL's Explorer satellite, launched in 1958. He was the principal investigator for the radiation experiment that was part of the Pioneer III and IV payloads. Here, he is looking at the cone-shaped Pioneer probe, before it was gold plated and painted with stripes (to maintain a temperature of 10-50 degrees C during flight).