Explorer 1
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NASA
42 Years of Measuring the Sun, the Earth and the Energy in Between
On Jan. 31, 1958, Explorer 1 became the first satellite launched by the United States. Its primary science instrument, a cosmic ray detector, was designed to measure the radiation environment in Earth orbit. Though its final transmission was in May 1958, it continued to revolve around Earth more than 58,000 times. As those looping orbits continued, NASA was busy building…
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NASA
Celebrating 60 Years of America in Space on Jan. 31
Late in the evening of Jan. 31, 1958, the United States took its first step into space with the launch of the Explorer 1 satellite from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The slender, 30-pound satellite would yield a major scientific discovery — the Van Allen radiation belts circling our planet — and ushered in six decades of groundbreaking U.S. space science and…
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