On Sept. 29, 1962, Canada launched Alouette 1, its first satellite, from the Pacific Missile Range in California, according to the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). Sources differ on the date: Space.com’s on-this-day feature places the launch on Sept. 28. The CSA gives Sept. 29, 1962, at 2:06 a.m. EST.
The 145-kilogram spacecraft rode a two-stage Thor-Agena rocket into a near-polar orbit of roughly 1,000 kilometres, according to SpaceNews. Canada supplied the satellite; the United States supplied the rocket and the launch range. The CSA says Canada became the first nation after the Soviet Union and the United States to design and build its own artificial Earth satellite. SpaceNews describes Canada as the third nation to do so, and notes it did so without building its own launch infrastructure.
The satellite was built by scientists at the Defence Research Telecommunications Establishment (DRTE), led by John Chapman, with contractors that included RCA and Spar Aerospace, the CSA says. Its job was to study the ionosphere, the electrically charged layer of the upper atmosphere that reflects radio waves and affects long-distance communication. Its main instrument was a sweep-frequency ionospheric sounder, according to SpaceNews, which measured the distribution and variation of electron density in the ionosphere above 400 kilometres.
To do that, Alouette 1 unfurled two dipole antennas, one 22.8 metres long and the other 45.7 metres, deployed perpendicular to each other, SpaceNews reports. The spacecraft carried four instruments in all: the sounder, a very low frequency receiver, an energetic particle detector and a cosmic noise detector.
The mission was planned to last one year. Instead, the CSA says, Alouette 1 stretched its one-year design life into an unprecedented 10-year mission. SpaceNews calls that a record at the time. The data it returned fed into nearly 300 scientific articles, according to the same account.
The CSA says Alouette 1 was followed by Alouette 2, a refurbished backup model launched as part of the International Satellites for Ionospheric Studies (ISIS) program, which extended the same line of research. More than six decades later, the CSA has reported on efforts to save and restore the satellite’s archived data, a reminder that the original recordings remain of scientific interest.
The CSA marked the launch’s 60th anniversary in 2022 with a photo feature on what it called 60 years of Canada in space.
Sources conflict on the exact date and time of the launch, and the CSA’s own page lists the time in Eastern Standard Time, so readers citing the anniversary should note that the day depends on the time zone used. What is not in dispute is the year, the launch site, the rocket, or the fact that Canada’s first satellite went into orbit that autumn and kept working for a decade.
