January 31
EXPLORER I DAY
U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower received a telephone call shortly after 10:48 a.m. on this day in 1958. The call was on his direct line to Cape Canaveral, Florida. What the President heard was that the launch of the Explorer I satellite was successful.
Explorer I was put into orbit around the earth by a Jupiter-C rocket. Radio signals from the transmitter aboard the 30.8 pound satellite were picked up in California within a few minutes after the launch.
Just 56 days earlier, the first U.S. attempt to launch a satellite had failed. This time, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency’s research team headed by Wernher von Braun, a former German rocket scientist, and their Director of the Development Operations Division, worked in conjunction with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California to produce a modified Jupiter-C rocket that could carry Explorer I.
The first U.S. space satellite, Explorer I, orbited the earth every 114 minutes at a maximum height of 2,000 miles and a minimum altitude of 230 miles. Its purpose was to measure cosmic radiation found in space and send the data back to earth; a scientific experiment of James A. Van Allen. Van Allen was the scientist who discovered the radiation belts that bear his name (the Van Allen Belt).
This event marked the beginning of discussions, debates and decisions that would lead to the formation of NASA and eventually to the creation of Saturn launch vehicles.
Those Were the Days, the Today in History service from 440 International
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