NASA initially balked at Alouette
Satellite pioneer says Canadian project originally deemed too ambitious
MONTREAL – Colin Franklin remembers the challenge of starting from scratch to build the Alouette-1 satellite which launched Canada as a spacefaring nation 50 years ago.
When it went into orbit in 1962, Canada became the third country in the world, after the then-Soviet Union and the United States, to have a satellite in space.
At 31, Franklin was chief electrical engineer and the oldest member of the team in 1959 when work began on the satellite to signal the beginning of Canada’s space history.
“Most people working on the project were younger than that,” Franklin said in an interview. “I remember somebody sarcastically commenting that we were the farm team.”
Alouette-1 was launched by NASA from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Sept. 29, 1962.
Franklin says that from the very start, the project had its doubters, with many experts considering it too ambitious.
“The spacecraft was complex and exceptionally advanced for the technology of the time,” he said. “In fact, NASA considered it too advanced for the available technology.
“NASA was skeptical the thing would work, but nevertheless they supported us.”
But Franklin, now 84, says the U.S. space agency was keen on having international partners and suggested that Canada go ahead — even though the satellite program had to be developed from scratch.
“Transistors were just in their infancy in those days (and) there were no textbooks and virtually nothing in the way of reports and there was really nobody else to go to at the time.
“We were really having to develop a new art in space mechanics and space electronics because there was very little precedent for what we were doing.”
Franklin says the program was sold to NASA on the basis of acquiring new information on the properties of the ionosphere, but another objective was to develop Canadian space capability. Different regions of the ionosphere make radio communications possible by reflecting radio waves back to Earth.
“Certainly in those days, it was very important in long-distance radio communications,” Franklin added.
Alouette-1 orbited 1,000 kilometres above the Earth for 10 years, probing the ionosphere below and sending data to ground stations.
The satellite pioneer also boasted that the batteries used to power the 145-kilogram Alouette lasted 10 years, “at a time when satellite batteries would last no more than one year at the most.
“The success of Alouette gave Canada an international reputation for excellence in design engineering,” he said. “And in particular, it gave de Havilland of Toronto, which later became Spar Aerospace, the credibility to bid on the Canadarm.”