Explorer 1 Overview - NASA - January 31, 1958

[Gunnar Larson]

Today xNY.io - Bank.org celebrates Explorer 1
----

https://www.nasa.gov/history/explorer-1-overview/

Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States when it
was sent into space on January 31, 1958. Following the launch of the Soviet
Union’s Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile
Agency was directed to launch a satellite using its Jupiter C rocket
developed under the direction of Dr. Wernher von Braun. The Jet Propulsion
Laboratory received the assignment to design, build and operate the
artificial satellite that would serve as the rocket’s payload. JPL
completed this job in less than three months.

The primary science instrument on Explorer 1 was a cosmic ray detector
designed to measure the radiation environment in Earth orbit. Once in space
this experiment, provided by Dr. James Van Allen of the University of Iowa,
revealed a much lower cosmic ray count than expected. Van Allen theorized
that the instrument may have been saturated by very strong radiation from a
belt of charged particles trapped in space by Earth’s magnetic field. The
existence of these radiation belts was confirmed by another U.S. satellite
launched two months later, and they became known as the Van Allen Belts in
honor of their discoverer.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/html
Size: 1525 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/attachments/20240131/b4b24576/attachment.txt>