The International Geophysical Year (AGI) was a globally coordinated research project conducted between July 1957 and December 1958; this event, with the launch in October 1957 of the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1, marks the beginning of the Space Age.
Scientists from around the world have, since 1882, come together to organize intensive scientific and exploratory programs in the polar regions, which has led to significant advances in scientific knowledge and geographical exploration. Those International Polar Years have not only laid the groundwork for understanding global systems of nature and launching the modern Space Age, but they have paved the way for many other international scientific collaborations and a lasting political agreement.
The First International Polar Year (1882 – 1883)
The first International Polar Year in history, probably the most ambitious of nineteenth century international scientific projects and the forerunner of more recent cooperative ventures, brought together twelve countries: the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States of America. The IPY was first organized by Georg Neumayer, director of the Deutsche Seewarte (or Reichsinstitut Deutsche Seewarte), at the initiative of the Austro-Hungarian geophysicist Karl Weyprecht, who wished to unite the great scientific nations of the time. Thanks to his experience in the polar regions, Lt. Karl Weyprecht realized that answers to the fundamental questions of meteorology and geophysics were most likely to be found in the polar regions of the Earth. He also understood that the polar phenomenon could not be studied by a single nation; that a company of this size would require large-scale international cooperation.
The First International Polar Year was held in 1882 – 1883 to coincide with the passage of Venus before the Sun on December 6, 1882. Everything was to be done in the field of climatology: the projects were as much interested in short-term meteorology as in long-range variations, as well as in geophysics. Expeditions were organized in the Arctic and in Antarctica. They amassed tremendous amounts of information that is the foundation of our knowledge of the Earth’s magnetic field and climate. Above all, this first IPY set an important precedent in the field of international scientific cooperation. The decision to collaborate with, rather than compete with, other nations, and to focus on scientific efforts rather than acquisition of territory, was a courageous move.
The Second International Polar Year (1932 – 1933)
The year 1932 – 1933 marked both the fiftieth anniversary of the first IPY and the launch of a new edition. The idea of a second edition was raised by the International Meteorological Organization (the first organization formed with the purpose of exchanging weather information among the countries of the world, lately superseded by the World Meteorological Organization), which wished above all to advance in the study of magnetic anomalies. Other topics were mentioned, such as the northern lights and the jet stream. The participation of forty nations coincided with the advent of aircraft, motorized sea and land transport, and new instruments that made even more ambitious research projects possible. Despite significant economic challenges to be overcome as a result of the Great Depression, detailed observations and experiments were made, resulting in many advances in the fields of meteorology and magnetism. Forty permanent observation stations were stablished in the Arctic, many of which still exist today. In Antarctica, an expedition established a weather station for winter activities; it was the first research station inland of Antarctica.
The initial project included one-year observations at existing Arctic and Antarctic stations. Forty countries were mobilized, but the comprehensive results were not be published until 1951, the Second World War having slowed down their analysis.
The IGY (1957 – 1958)
The third edition of the International Polar Year was called the International Geophysical Year. It was characterised by the massive use of technologies inherited from the Second World War and reinvested in the scientific field, starting with the radar. Many expeditions to Antarctica were placed under the voluntary coordination of seventy countries in the midst of the Cold War. This IGY impelled the Antarctic Treaty in 1959 (Article 2 of which provides for freedom of scientific research and cooperation in Antarctica, as practiced during the International Geophysical Year: “The Parties will contribute toward the further development of peaceful and friendly international relations by strengthening their free institutions, by bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon which these institutions are founded, and by promoting conditions of stability and well-being. They will seek to eliminate conflict in their international economic policies and will encourage economic collaboration between any or all of them.”) as well as the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (also known as the Madrid Protocol) in 1991; as a result emerged different principles such as the principle of freezing territorial claims, the principle of non-militarization and non-nuclearization or the principle of freedom of scientific research.
The International Geophysical Year, although not primarily devoted to space research, is at the direct origin of the sending of satellites into space, and therefore of the appearance in this field of legal issues of an international character. After the organisation – at the end of the nineteenth century and between the two world wars – of two International Polar Years dedicated to the study of meteorological and magnetic phenomena, and to measurements at altitude, scientists came up, in the summer of 1950, with the idea of a third International Polar Year (these scientists, who had extensive relations in academic circles and with their governments, felt that, given the advances in the field of equipment for the study of Earth such as rockets, radars and computing devices, a scientific event was to be organized without delay and proposed to extend the scope of investigation to the whole Earth). Several unions grouped in the “International Council of Scientific Unions” decided in October 1951 to form a special committee to prepare what will be later called the International Geophysical Year. The first working session of the Committee took place in July 1953 in Brussels and it established a program covering two complete solar periods (July 1, 1957 to December 31, 1958); the eleventh commission of the Committee, devoted to rockets and satellites, made many inquiries concerning the polar regions, the terrestrial atmosphere, and solar influences. Rockets and satellites were then to be launched, intended to study the upper atmosphere. In September 1954 in Rome, the Committee considered as possible the projection of temporary satellites equipped with instruments capable of providing emitting stations with information on the phenomena of the upper atmosphere and outer space, in particular under the influence of solar radiation and corpuscles.
The United States of America and the Soviet Union announced in July 1955 that they would each launch an artificial satellite on the occasion of this event (no stake other than scientific was attached to this objective at the time). The setbacks of the Vanguard program (with 7 failures on 11 shots between 1957 and 1959), chosen to represent the American contribution to the IGY, earned the USSR, to everyone’s surprise, to be the first power to put into orbit the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957. As for the United States of America, its president Dwight D. Eisenhower, finally confided to the team of the German scientist Wernher von Braun the mission to launch the first artificial satellite. Thus, the first American satellite, Explorer 1, was finally launched on February 1, 1958 by a Jupiter-C rocket. It allowed one of the most important discoveries of the IGY: the Van Allen radiation belt discovered using an onboard instrument developed by Professor James Van Allen.
The International Geophysical Year was also an opportunity for nations such as France, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada and Australia to develop rocket programs for the exploration of the upper atmosphere. This is how France developed the IGY version of the Véronique rocket, which could carry a payload of 60 kg at a 210 km altitude; the Véronique rocket was the first rocket to take off from the Guiana space centre in Kourou, Guyana, on 9 April 1968, following the closure of Hammaguir in July 1967.