Posted on 06/22/2016 4:28:52 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Vanguard 1 was the fourth satellite launched into space and the first that was solar powered. It was also, perhaps, the most successful of the early satellites. Though Vanguard 1 weighed in at a paltry 3.2 pounds, it remained operational for 2,200 days, and took readings from space which showed that the Earth is slightly pear-shaped. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev derided Vanguard as "the grapefruit satellite" (probably out of jealousy). Vanguard 1 remains in orbit to this day, making it the oldest manmade satellite in space.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearscience.com ...
How cool is that!? Incredible piece of history. And you were there. Not many can make that claim. :-)
Thank you very much for the link. You must be very proud of your Dad.
I would be lost (literally) without GPS, as I have no sense of direction, and I travel for a living. Thank you, Mr. Easton.
Vanguard is an historic artifact; just a little out of reach.
Thanks again!
In the '50s my dad worked for the Navy, in a department called Shore Electronics in the Bureau of Yards and Docks. I always thought that was a particularly obscure and uninteresting place to build a career based on its name, but I was wrong. For one thing, he was involved in building a huge radio telescope called "The Big Ear" in Sugar Grove West Virginia, a place that enjoyed very little radio interference compared to anywhere else. As a child, he told me that the goal of The Big Ear was to explore outer space, but years later I read in James Bramford's The Puzzle Palace that its true function was to eavesdrop on Soviet communications bounced off the Moon and back to Earth. Sadly, some years ago The Big Ear collapsed, probably as the result of having been designed with slide rules making load calculations.
I also remember standing with him in the front yard one night soon after Echo was launched and spotting it with him as a small dot of light crossing the sky between the stars.
The Low Earth Orbit satellites reflect sunlight just before dawn and just after dusk. They are often reported as UFOs since when they enter the earth shadow they disappear and seem to just go up.
Amateur radio operators have a lot of fun doing that, called EME (Earth-Moon-Earth) Takes a fairly high gain antenna to transmit and then receive the echo.
Saw the Echo satellite fly overhead.
Big enough “balloon” that they simply tried to bounce radio signals off of it to get across the Atlantic. Couldn’t get the power to use an active receiver transponder yet.
That’s what i remember too: Standing outside with dad watching it fly over. So fast!
How cool is that? (I hear it can be pretty damn cold out there).
If those are odd-looking, what are normal-looking satellites supposed to look like?
Here are pictures of Vanguard TV-3’s satellite which survived Flopnik in December, 1957. It’s a duplicate of Vanguard 1.
http://picasaweb.google.com/roger.easton/20080316_Vanguard_1_Reunion
www.gpsdeclassified.com
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