“Setting fire to the last forest”: Project West Ford and the mobilization of the astronomical community 1958–1965

The dawning of the Space Age marked the start of an ongoing relationship between the professional astronomical community and both state and non-state actors that launch and operate spacecraft in near-Earth orbital space. While the Cold War heated up in the late 1950s, military uses of outer space quickly came into conflict with the priorities of astronomers then building ever-bigger ground-based telescopes and envisioning the first generation of space telescopes. As the threat of global thermonuclear war loomed, the United States carried out Project West Ford, which tested an “artificial ionosphere” for microwave radio propagation by placing several hundred million tiny copper dipoles into a belt orbiting the Earth. While the test was ultimately successful, it ignited a firestorm of concern and criticism among astronomers and ultimately influenced the framing of the United Nations Outer Space Treaty. Here we examine the history of Project West Ford as it prompted astronomers to react, comparing it with the ongoing problem of the potential impact of large satellite constellations on astronomical research.