This Time in History In these videos, find out what happened this month (or any month!) in history.#WTFact Videos In #WTFact Britannica shares some of the most bizarre facts we can find.Demystified Videos In Demystified, Britannica has all the answers to your burning questions.Britannica Classics Check out these retro videos from Encyclopedia Britannica’s archives.Explorer 1 stopped transmitting when its batteries ran out on May 23, 1958, although it stayed in orbit until March 31, 1970, completing 58,376 orbits. Explorer 1 orbited Earth approximately every 114.8 minutes, making 12.54 orbits each day. Coupled with the Jupiter-C rocket, the vehicle stood 71.25 feet (21.72 meters) and weighed 64,000 pounds (29 metric tons) when loaded for launch. The satellite was 80.75 inches (2.05 meters) long and weighed 30.66 pounds (13.90 kg), 18.35 pounds (8.32 kg) of which was from instrumentation. The satellite was constructed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, under director William Pickering. The science components were designed and built by James Van Allen, head of the University of Iowa physics department. The Jupiter-C launch rocket was built at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville, Alabama, under the direction of Wernher von Braun. (EST) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, after two days of launch delays due to high winds. 1, 1958 NASA opened for business.Įxplorer 1 was the first successful U.S. The success of Explorer 1 and other satellites that soon followed in 1958, lead Congress to pass the National Aeronautics and Space Act that summer, which was signed into law by President Eisenhower on July 29, 1958. At a jubilant early-morning press conference a few hours later, Pickering, von Braun and Van Allen hoisted a model of Explorer 1 over their heads in what has become an iconic photograph. Satellite 1958 Alpha, later and better known as Explorer 1, successfully lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on Jan. The government quickly turned to the Jupiter-C rocket developed by Wernher von Braun and his team at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) in Alabama, who had been working with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California under the direction of William Pickering on building the satellite, which would carry an experiment to measure the "cosmic rays" around Earth developed by University of Iowa physicist James Van Allen. The Navy’s Vanguard rocket lifted up barely 3 feet before it toppled over and exploded just a few seconds after launch. 6, 1957 "in the hope that it could help restore public confidence, but it was a disaster of the first order," Launius wrote.
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The White House invited the news media to cover the test launch of a Project Vanguard booster on Dec. Eisenhower "had to move quickly to restore confidence at home and prestige abroad," wrote former NASA Chief Historian Roger D. The administration of President Dwight D. to get into the "Space Race" intensified. When it did it again with Sputnik 2 less than a month later, the pressure on the U.S. When the beeping signal of Sputnik 1 was picked up by receivers around the world in October 1957, there was no doubt the Soviet Union had scored a victory politically, militarily, scientifically and symbolically.
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3D Model: Click (or touch) and drag to interact with this 3D model of the Explorer 1 spacecraft.