Operation Moonwatch

Until professionally staffed optical tracking stations came on-line in 1958, this network of amateur scientists and other interested citizens played a critical role in providing crucial information regarding the world's first satellites.

During the Cold War, the United States also encouraged thousands of citizens to take part in the Ground Observer Corps, a nationwide program to spot Soviet bombers.

In 1955, as the recently appointed director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Whipple proposed that amateurs could play a vital role in efforts to track the first satellites.

[citation needed] In the late 1950s, thousands of teenagers, housewives, amateur astronomers, school teachers, and other citizens served on Moonwatch teams around the globe.

Using specially designed telescopes, hand-built or purchased from vendors like Radio Shack, scores of Moonwatchers nightly monitored the skies.

[citation needed] Once professional scientists had accepted the idea that ordinary citizens could spot satellites and contribute to legitimate scientific research, Whipple and his colleagues organized amateurs around the world.

By October 1957, Operation Moonwatch had some 200 teams ready to go into action, including observers in Hawaii [5] and Australia [6] Whipple envisioned a global network of specially designed instruments that could track and photograph satellites.

Based on a series of super-Schmidt wide-angle telescopes and strategically placed around the globe at 12 locations, the innovative cameras could track rapidly moving targets while simultaneously viewing large swaths of the sky.

For the opening months of the Space Age, members of Moonwatch were the only organized worldwide network that was prepared to spot and help track satellites.

[citation needed] Moonwatch caught the attention of those citizens interested in science or the Space Race during the late 1950s and much of the general public as well.

Operation Moonwatch was the most successful amateur activity of the IGY and it became the public face of a satellite tracking network that expanded the Smithsonian's global reach.

Whipple used satellite tracking as a gateway for his observatory to participate in new research opportunities that appeared in the early years of space exploration.