NEWELL, HOMER EDWARD, JR.

(b. Holyoke, Massachusetts, 11 March 1915; d. Alexandria, Virginia, 18 July 1983)

mathematics, physics, astrophysics, space science.

Homer E. Newell Jr. served for nearly thirty years as a leader in the space science community, first at the Naval Research Laboratory and later as a key official in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He is best known for his service as the NASA associate administrator for space science during the Apollo era of the 1960s. But even before the creation of NASA in 1958, Newell played a key role in efforts to develop the space science community and to use the rapidly advancing technology of rocketry and electronics to study the upper atmosphere and space. He retired from NASA in 1973, along with many other Apollo era leaders, and continued to serve on science study boards and to write and lecture on the subject until his death a decade later.

Early Professional Experiences Educated at Harvard University, where he earned both bachelor and master of arts degrees, he then went to the University of Wisconsin, where he received a PhD in mathematics in 1940. While away from his native New England, Newell met, courted, and married Mary Janice May Hurd of Madison, Wisconsin (known to all as Janice) in February 1936. They eventually had four children, Judith, Sue, Jennifer, and Andrew.

Upon completing his PhD, Newell accepted a position as an instructor in the Mathematics Department of the University of Maryland, and he moved his family to Kensington, Maryland. Newell worked at the university for only two years, and through the bulk of World War II served as an aerial navigation instructor for the Civil Aeronautics Administration. This fulfilled his military obligation, maximized the use of his talents, and kept him near his growing family. Indeed he stayed in government service the remainder of his career. In 1944 Newell moved to the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in suburban Washington, D.C. During his tenure with NRL he served as theoretical physicist, mathematician, section head, head of the Rocket Sonde Branch, and acting superintendent of the Atmosphere and Astrophysics Division.

The Early Space Science Program Beginning in 1945, the NRL organized a rocket research component to explore the possibilities of this new technology developed by various nations, especially Germany with its V-2 program. Named the Rocket Sonde Research Section, NRL viewed this organization as necessary to the long-term future of national defense. Germany had demonstrated with its V-2s that this technology held potential for the United States, and all of the federal organizations engaged

in research into high-speed flight scrambled to develop the capability. In addition to NRL, the army brought back for study not only captured V-2s but also some of the scientists and engineers who had developed these weapons, most notably Wernher von Braun and several associates from Peenemünde, who made a point of surrendering to the Americans so they might continue their work after the war. As another example, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) created the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD) at its Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, devoting its efforts to the study of stability and maneuverability of high-speed weapons, especially guided missiles.

Newell joined the NRL Rocket Sonde Research Section immediately, and in 1946 was named to head it. He commented in his 1980 memoir that the members of this section were inexperienced and somewhat naive at first. He wrote:

No one in the section was experienced in upper atmospheric research, so the section immediately entered a period of intensive self-education. Members lectured each other on aerodynamics, rocket propulsion, telemetering—whatever appeared to be important for the new tasks ahead. The author gave a number of talks on satellites and satellite orbits. Indeed, the possibility of going immediately to artificial satellites of the earth as research platforms was considered by the group, which assimilated carefully whatever information it could obtain from military studies of the time. The conclusion was that one could indeed begin an artificial satellite program and expect to succeed, but that the amount of new development required would be costly and time consuming. (p. 33)

Newell’s purpose in this effort had more to do with science than engineering, however, and he guided the section away from efforts to reach orbit as a near term goal. Instead he emphasized the development of small and less complex “sounding rockets” designed to reach the upper atmosphere, where scientists could use instrument packages to measure cosmic rays and other physical phenomena of interest. As he wrote in his memoir, “scientists could not hope to have their instruments aloft for some years to come and, anyway, were not likely to get their hands on the necessary funds. The Rocket Sonde Research Section accordingly shelved the satellite idea and turned to sounding rockets” (p. 34).

In the context of scientific exploration of the upper atmosphere Newell first demonstrated on a broad stage one of his chief skills, the scientist as entrepreneur. The bespectacled, balding scientist had the ability to persuade divergent people with divergent interests and priorities to agree on fundamental steps and to execute them. This proved one of his most important talents throughout his later career. He repeatedly fashioned coalitions of scientists, engineers, and military and government officials to support various initiatives that at first seemed impossible. For example, he proved central to efforts to persuade the army’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which wanted to develop rockets for national security purposes, to allow scientists to place scientific instruments atop them. Newell accepted JPL’s condition that these efforts be utilitarian science that either directly supported the larger defense mission or was a natural by-product of it. Beyond that, he persistently advocated the role of science and oversaw efforts to place on some of the army’s test vehicles instruments that provided data about the upper atmosphere, solar and stellar ultraviolet radiation, and the aurora. This became a very successful scientific program that was carried out with limited fanfare and funding. As a result, scientists taking part in this program used JPL’s WAC-Corporal rocket, and later the Department of Defense’s captured V-2s, as well as follow-on missiles, for scientific research throughout the 1940s and 1950s.

The breakthrough in Newell's, and several of his colleagues’, campaign for science on military rockets came on 16 January 1946 when several physicists and astronomers interested in cosmic-ray, solar, and atmospheric research gathered at NRL along with representatives of the military services to discuss possible cooperation. “It was plain from the deliberations that a number of groups,” he recalled in his memoir, “both in universities and in the military would be interested in taking part in a program of highaltitude rocket research” (p. 34). This meeting led to the creation of the V-2 Upper Atmosphere Panel to oversee this effort in February 1946 to “develop a scientific program, assign priorities for experiments to fly on the V-2s, and to advise the Army Ordnance Department on matters essential to the success of the program” (Megerian). In March 1948 it became the Upper Atmosphere Rocket Research Panel and in 1957 the Rocket and Satellite Research Panel. It prioritized the use of these vehicles to study solar and stellar ultraviolet radiation, the aurora, and the nature of the upper atmosphere. As a result, the panel served as the “godfather” of the infant scientific field of space science. This successful collaboration led to numerous important scientific results, including measurement of the ionosphere, solar radiation, cosmic radiation, micrometeorites, and sky brightness, as well as biomedical research and photography of Earth from space.

Newell played a key role in these activities throughout the pre-Sputnik period. Initially chaired by Ernst Krause, whom Newell worked for at NRL, the panel later had James Van Allen as chair and thereafter Newell. He and the other members of this panel put the V-2s to good scientific use. For example, between 1946 and 1951 sixty-seven captured V-2s were test launched, most with some scientific payload aboard. The panel also oversaw development of new sounding rockets and continued to control the nation’s sounding rocket program until NASA Headquarters took over this function in 1958. After the formation of NASA, several members of the panel, including Newell, joined NASA and applied the experience they had gained to the organization and management of NASA’s space science program.

At the same time, Newell was involved as the space science coordinator for the Naval Research Laboratory’s Viking rocket program. Built by the Glenn L. Martin Company, the first Viking launched from White Sands on 3 May 1949, while the twelfth and last Viking took off on 4 February 1955. The program uncovered significant scientific information about the upper atmosphere and took impressive highaltitude photographs of Earth. All of these were sounding rockets, and their science experiments were coordinated through the Upper Atmosphere Rocket Research Panel.

IGY Space Science Program Although space science went back to the early twentieth century and advanced significantly using balloons and atmospheric flights before the development of rocketry, it received an immeasurable boost from the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of July 1957 through December 1958. As early as 1950 a small group of scientists that included Newell began discussing among themselves the possibility of using Earth-circling satellites to obtain scientific information about the planet. In 1952, urged on by these same American scientists, the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) proposed the IGY, a cooperative scientific endeavor to study solar-terrestrial relations during a period of maximum solar activity. In all, 67 nations agreed.

In October 1954, at the behest of Newell and his colleagues, ICSU challenged nations to use their missiles being developed for war to launch scientific satellites to support the IGY research program. In July 1955 largely the same enclave of American scientists convinced President Dwight D. Eisenhower that the United States should respond to the ICSU call for participation in the IGY by launching a scientific satellite. Eisenhower’s decision called for existing organizations within the Department of Defense to develop and launch a small scientific satellite, “under international auspices, such as the International Geophysical Year, in order to emphasize its peaceful purposes[;] … considerable prestige and psychological benefits will accrue to the nation which first is successful in launching a satellite … especially if the USSR were to be the first to establish a satellite” (NSC 5520). The result was Project Vanguard, carried out under the supervision of the NRL, with Newell in a key position to oversee the development of the scientific payload. The proposed launch vehicle combined the older Viking first stage, an Aerobee sounding rocket second stage, and a new third stage with a 3.5-pound scientific satellite payload.

While Vanguard was in development, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957 and utterly changed the nature of space science. This satellite was the Soviet entry into the IGY program, and its success spelled crisis in the United States. Within weeks accelerated efforts for American space flight had been placed in motion. Almost in desperation the NRL attempted the launch of the first Vanguard mission on 8 December 1957; it led to a spectacular explosion and fire on the launchpad on national television. To catch up, on 31 January 1958 the U.S. Army’s Ballistic Missile Agency used a Redstone rocket to place the first American satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit. This satellite discovered what came to be known as the Van Allen belts of radiation, and a terrestrial magnetosphere.

Like many others, Newell helped to develop the response to Sputnik. The event led directly to several critical efforts aimed at “catching up” to the Soviet Union’s space achievements. Among these:

• a full-scale review of both the civil and military programs of the United States (scientific satellite efforts and ballistic missile development);
• establishment of a presidential science advisor in the White House, who had responsibility for overseeing the activities of the federal government in science and technology;
• creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency in the Department of Defense, and the consolidation of several space activities under centralized management;
• establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to manage civil space operations; and
• passage of the National Defense Education Act to provide federal funding for education in the scientific and technical disciplines.

A direct result of this crisis, NASA began operations on 1 October 1958, absorbing the NACA intact: its eight thousand employees, an annual budget of one hundred million dollars, three major research laboratories— Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, and Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory—and two smaller test facilities. NASA quickly incorporated other organizations into the new agency. These included the space science group of the Naval Research Laboratory in the District of Columbia, including Homer Newell; the Jet Propulsion Laboratory managed by the California Institute of Technology for the army; and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville, Alabama. Eventually NASA created several other centers, and by the early 1960s had ten located around the country.

Establishment of Space Science at NASA Homer Newell enthusiastically transferred to NASA immediately after its creation in October 1958 to assume responsibility for planning and development of the new agency’s space science program. Working under Dr. Abe Silverstein, who headed NASA’s Office of Space Flight Program, Newell’s first task involved developing a science program for NASA. He recognized that the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 gave NASA broad authority to oversee all space science activities in the United States. The act gave NASA responsibility for “the expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space” (section 102[c][1]). Another passage set a goal for space science: “The preservation of the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology” (section 102[c][5]).

Newell also received from NASA administrator T. Keith Glennan a clear statement of his task. It outlined the objectives for NASA’s space flight experiments, and stated that the research program would be national in scope based on recommendations from educational and research institutions, industry, and federal laboratories. A key player in this process would be the Space Science Board (SSB) of the National Academy of Sciences, but NASA would establish the priorities for experiments and projects, not the SSB. Newell once again demonstrated his capability as a scientific entrepreneur by forging a strong relationship with the SSB that preserved NASA’s suzerainty while ensuring useful SSB involvement. Among other things, he used the board to provide broad oversight of NASA’s space science program and conduct many summer studies to develop long-range strategies for space science.

Newell also established a Space Science Steering Committee of other senior NASA officials and appointed several scientific subcommittees to provide technical support. Broadly based, these subcommittees had some of the most prestigious scientists in the nation, as well as many representatives from other NASA organizations. They took control of efforts to develop programs of research in their specific fields, reviewed proposals for experiments on any scientific mission, and established priorities. In spite of some rocky disturbances early in NASA’s history, Newell built close relationships between members of the scientific community and the engineering community that dominated NASA. By the early 1960s he had created a relatively stable and collegial, cobbling together a NASA/university/industry/research installation partnership to execute a broad range of scientific activities in the 1960s. By fostering a diversity of opinion from all interested parties in this process, Newell ensured that decisions were not only better than could be obtained by any one person, but also that they constituted a broad consensus. He also encouraged the scientists and engineers to communicate effectively so that a mission was ready for development and that the program office had chosen the best possible experiments. Newell’s success was reflected in the decision of the new NASA Administrator, James E. Webb, in November 1961 to appoint him associate administrator of a newly created Office of Space Science. Thereafter Newell reported directly to Webb, but continued to operate in essentially the same way.

Webb also gave Newell responsibility for oversight of NASA’s launch vehicles for robotic missions. He assigned JPL and the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, to him, and asked him to take responsibility for relations with the university community. By the end of 1961, therefore, Newell had under his direct control the entire assets, institutions, and facilities needed to conduct NASA’s space science program. This approach to space science continued approximately unchanged until 1974, when NASA Administrator James C. Fletcher reorganized NASA in the aftermath of Apollo and following the retirement of Newell.

Apollo Science In 1961 President John F. Kennedy, responding to perceived challenges to U.S. leadership in science and technology, announced a lunar landing effort that would place an American on the Moon before the end of the decade. Kennedy unveiled this commitment, called Project Apollo, before Congress on 25 May 1961 in a speech on “Urgent National Needs,” billed as a second State of the Union message. Though it was not created as a science program, Newell worked tirelessly to ensure that a healthy science component existed in the Apollo program. He succeeded largely through diligence and not a little conference room brawling.

It was never easy, however; Newell had constantly to negotiate the differences in priority between engineers interested in landing astronauts on the Moon and returning them safely versus scientists seeking to advance scientific ends. Newell commented specifically on this problem in his 1980 memoir:

For space science one of the most difficult problems of leadership, both inside and outside NASA, concerned the manned spaceflight program. Underlying the prevailing discontent in the scientific community regarding this program was a rather general conviction that virtually everything that men could do in the investigation of space, including the moon and planets, automated spacecraft could also do and at much lower cost. This conviction was reinforced by the Apollo program’s being primarily engineering in character. Indeed, until after the success of Apollo 11, science was the least of Apollo engineers’ concerns. Further, the manned project appeared to devour huge sums [of money], only small fractions of which could have greatly enhanced the unmanned space science program. (p. 290)

The scientists viewed the amount spent on human space missions as excessive and by reducing that part of NASA’s budget the funding could go to robotic missions. The expansive costs of human spaceflight might be more effectively utilized for scientific purposes by sending only robots. They perceived inefficiency, redundancy, and enormous costs to keep astronauts alive as waste, and with only a small percentage of that funding they believed they could accomplish so much.

This was very much an issue of an individual scientist’s angle of vision. James A. Van Allen, the dean of astrophysics and a respected voice on behalf of science, worked with Newell for years but always opposed human space-flight, including Apollo, because of the high costs that he believed could be used more productively to send out robotic explorers. In addition to other arguments, Newell appealed to the scientific community’s pragmatism. He often made the case to his scientist colleagues that everyone gained by having the much larger human space-flight activity essentially serving as political cover for the much smaller space science program. If not for human spaceflight, he asserted, Congress, the public, the media, and those representing competing interests would raid the space science budget. As it was, therefore, the human spaceflight budget would be the target. This served to quell the criticisms of many scientists who recognized that spaceflight was not a zero-sum game and that a reduction in the human spaceflight budget would not result in a corresponding increase in funding for space science.

Under Newell’s leadership, scientists exploited the opportunity to place more than seventy-five experiments on the various Apollo missions, and in the case of the last landing mission, to have one of their own, geologist Harrison Schmitt, undertake fieldwork on the Moon. The science packages deployed on the Moon led eventually to an impressive array of more than ten thousand scientific papers and a major reinterpretation of the origins and evolution of the Moon. As reported in Science in the issue of 30 March 1973, near the time of Newell’s retirement from NASA, “Man’s knowledge of the moon has been dramatically transformed during the brief 3-12; years between the first and last Apollo landing” (Hammond, p. 1313).

Planetary Science In addition to the human spaceflight programs, Newell also presided over an aggressive effort to send scientific probes to the Moon and planets, as well as observatories placed in Earth orbit. During the 1960s the U.S. space program began an impressive effort to gather information on the solar system using ground-, air-, and space-based equipment. Although the most significant findings of this investigation would not come until the 1970s, perhaps the “golden age” of planetary science, studies of the planets captured the imagination of many people from all types of backgrounds like nothing else save the Apollo lunar missions. For all the genuine importance of magnetospheric physics and solar studies, meteorology and plate tectonics, it was photographs of the planets and theories about the origins of the solar system that appealed to a much broader cross section of the public. As a result NASA had little difficulty in capturing and holding a widespread interest in this aspect of the space science program.

A centerpiece of Newell’s planetary science program was the Mariner series of probes, originated in the early part of the decade to investigate the nearby planets. Built by Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists and technicians, satellites of this program proved enormously productive. The United States claimed the first success in planetary exploration during the summer of 1962 when Mariner 2 was launched toward Venus. In December it arrived at the planet, probing the clouds, estimating planetary temperatures, measuring the charged particle environment, and looking for a magnetic field similar to Earth’s magnetosphere (but finding none). In July 1965 Mariner 4 flew by Mars, taking twenty-one close-up pictures, and Mariner 5 visited Venus in 1967 to investigate the atmosphere. Mariner 6 and Mariner 7, launched in February and March 1969, each passed Mars about five months later, studying its atmosphere and surface to lay the groundwork for an eventual landing on the planet. Among other discoveries from these probes, they found that much of Mars was cratered almost like the Moon, that volcanoes had once been active on the planet, that the frost observed seasonally on the poles was made of carbon dioxide, and that huge plates indicated considerable tectonic activity. Proposals for additional Mariner probes were also considered but because of budgetary considerations did not fly during the decade. These space probes, as well as others, accumulated volumes of data on the near planets and changed many scientific conceptions that had long held sway.

While Newell was pleased with these accomplishments, all was not rosy with the politics of planetary exploration. In the summer of 1967, even as the technical abilities required to conduct an adventurous space science program were being demonstrated, Newell and the planetary science community suffered a devastating defeat in Congress and lost funding for a soft-lander to Mars. No other NASA effort except Project Apollo was more exciting than the Mars program in the middle part of the decade. The planet had long held a special attraction to Americans, so much like Earth and possibly even sustaining life, and the lander would have allowed for extended robotic exploration of the Red Planet. A projected $2 billion program, the lander was to use the Saturn V launch vehicle being developed for Apollo. The problem revolved around the lack of consensus among scientists on the validity of the Mars initiative. Some were excited but others thought it was too expensive and placed too many hopes on the shoulders of one project and one project manager. Without that consensus and with other national priorities, such as spending for Great Society social programs, combating urban unrest, and the military in Vietnam, the Mars lander was an easy target in Congress.

From this defeat Newell and the scientific community learned a hard lesson about the pragmatic, and sometimes brutal, politics associated with Big Science. They realized that strife within the discipline had to be kept within the discipline in order to put forward a united front against the priorities of other interest groups and other government leaders. While imposing support from the scientific community could not guarantee that any initiative would become a political reality, without it a program could not be funded. They also learned that while a $750 million program found little opposition at any level, a $2 billion project crossed an ill-defined but very real threshold triggering intense competition for those dollars. Having learned these lessons, as well as some more subtle ones, the Newell contingent regrouped and went forward in the latter part of the decade with a trimmed-down Mars lander program, called Viking, that was funded and provided astounding scientific data in the mid-1970s.

Later Years In 1967 NASA administrator James Webb extended Newell’s responsibilities by naming him as the agency’s associate administrator, the position from which he retired on 31 December 1973. After his retirement Newell spent the next decade serving on advisory committees and writing and lecturing widely on space science. He died of a stroke at his Alexandria, Virginia, home on 18 July 1983.

Representative Edward Boland inserted into the Congressional Record a statement about Newell’s life and accomplishments, singling out his belief that the “scientific exploration of space should be under civilian rather than military auspices. He was also a staunch supporter of the free exchange between nations of data collected by rockets and satellites. This policy was at the heart of the International Geophysical Year of 1957–58.” To the last Newell had asserted the importance of space science. He told a reporter from the Washington Times in 1982 that he “believes that the Reagan administration is not spending enough money or energy on space science and exploration.” He continued, “We start something—go great guns—yet leave the whole thing unfinished. There’s research still to be done. You wish it could be done!”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS BY NEWELL

High Altitude Rocket Research. New York: Academic Press, 1953. Vector Analysis. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955.

Space Book for Young People. New York: Whittelsey House, 1958. Sounding Rockets. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959.

Window in the Sky: The Story of Our Upper Atmosphere. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959.

Express to the Stars: Rockets in Action. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961.

Guide to Rockets, Missiles, and Satellites. New York: Whittelsey House, 1961.

Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science. NASA Special Publication 4211. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of Management, Scientific and Technical Information Program, 1980.

OTHER SOURCES

Beattie, Donald A. Taking Science to the Moon: Lunar Experiments and the Apollo Program. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Boland, Edward P. “Dr. Homer E. Newell Jr., Associate Administrator of NASA, 1967–1973,” Congressional Record, daily edition, 29 July 1983, p. E 3994. Also U.S. Congress.

Boland (MA). “Dr. Homer E. Newell Jr., Associate Administrator of NASA, 1967–1973.” Congressional Record, permanent edition, 98^th Cong., 1^st sess., 129, part 16 (29 July 1983): 21780–21781.

Bulkeley, Rip. The Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy: A Critique of the Historiography of Space. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

Green, Constance McLaughlin, and Milton Lomask. Vanguard: A History. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971.

Hammond, Allen L. “Lunar Science: Analyzing the Apollo Legacy.” Science, n.s., 179 (1973): 1313–1315.

Lowman, Paul D., Jr. “T Plus Twenty Five Years: A Defense of the Apollo Program.” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 49 (1996): 71–79.

Megerian, George K. “Minutes of V-2 Upper Atmosphere Research Panel Meeting.” V-2 Report no. 1, 27 February 1946 (unpublished). NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, Washington, DC.

Murray, Bruce. Journey into Space. New York: W.W. Norton, 1989.

National Security Council, NSC 5520. “Draft Statement of Policy on U.S. Scientific Satellite Program,” 20 May 1955 (unpublished). NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, Washington, DC.

Naugle, John E. First among Equals: The Selection of NASA Space Science Experiments. NASA Special Publication 4215. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of Management, Scientific and Technical Information Program, 1991.

“Space Planner; Homer Edward Newell Jr.,” New York Times, 13 April 1959, p. 18.

Spitzer, Lyman, Jr. “Astronomical Advantages of an ExtraTerrestrial Observatory.” Astronomy Quarterly 7 (September 1946): 19–20.

United States Congress. National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 (Public Law 85-568, 29 July 1958). U.S. Statutes at Large 72 (1958): 426–438.

United States National Committee for the International Geophysical Year 1957–1958. “Minutes of the First Meeting, Technical Panel on Earth Satellite Program, October 20, 1955” (unpublished). NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, Washington, DC.

Van Allen, James A. Origins of Maqnetospheric Physics. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1983.

Varricchio, Louis. “Inconstant Moon—A Brief History of U.S. Lunar Science from 1840 to 1972” (unpublished paper). NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, Washington, DC.

Ward, Kathryn. “Physicist Homer Newell.” Washington Times, 8 July 1982.

Roger D. Launius