Arthur D. Code understood that astrophysics happened in outer space – and that was where the telescopes needed to be.
Code first made his telescope-in-space proposal in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik launch in 1957. The National Academy of Sciences had asked scientists what they would do if they had access to a 100-pound satellite.
“I was one of the few who proposed astronomy experiments,” Code later told The Milwaukee Journal in 1995. “Most of the other proposals suggested using a satellite to look at Earth.”