![]() These zones of radiation, later known as Van Allen Belts, were the first major discovery of the Space Age, and caused serious issues to the Apollo program, because astronauts had to go pass these radiation belts to go to the Moon. They got their named from the American physicist James Van Allen (1914-2006):īack in the 1950s, Van Allen launched a “rockoon”, a rocket lifted by a balloon above the atmosphere, and it detected the first hint of radiation at high altitudes. Above the 600-kilometre mark, you enter the “Van Allen” belts, zones of energetically charged particles that have been captured by our Earth’s magnetic field. Their priority was to protect the astronauts, so this already eliminates the possibility of an orbit at more than 600 kilometres altitude, because the radiation is just too high for human beings to endure for extended periods of time.
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