A "freeway" through the solar system resembling a vast array of virtual winding tunnels and conduits around the Sun and planets, as envisioned by an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., can slash the amount of fuel needed for future space missions. Explorer 1 was designed and built by the California Institute of Technology's JPL under the direction of Dr. William H. Pickering.It was the second satellite to carry a mission payload (Sputnik 2 was the first). Like it's predecessor, Explorer 3 collected data confirming the theory that radiation belts trapped by Earth's magnetic field exist around the planet. Explorer 1 was launched on January 31, 1958 at 22:48 Eastern Time (February 1, 03:48 UTC) atop the first The U.S. Earth satellite program began in 1954 as a joint The total mass of the satellite was 13.37 kilograms (30.80 lb), of which 8.3 kg (18.3 lb) were instrumentation. The test was a success, passing within three and a half miles of the craft. The United States began working on rockets decades before NASA was even created. Explorer 3 was the third satellite of the Explorer mission series and the first successful follow-on to Explorer 1, which made history when in January 1958 it became the United States' first space satellite. 1:6 Explorer I Satellite on Amazon.com. It was a small, spheroidal satellite designed to study trapped radiation of various energies, galactic cosmic rays, geomagnetism, radio propagation in the upper atmosphere, and the flux of micrometeorites. Yet as it sprang skyward from Cape Canaveral, Fla., 45 years ago today, January 31, 1958, aboard a Jupiter-C rocket, the Explorer 1 satellite carried with it the enormous hopes and dreams of a Cold War America. To engage students in this exciting NASA activity, the Rocky 7 team is seeking international participation by middle and secondary schools interested in remotely driving the rover during one of the tests on May 30. For the Iranian Explorer-1 rocket, see Explorer 1 in its orbital configuration, with the launch vehicle's fourth stage attachedMatt Bille and Erika Lishock, The First Space Race: Launching the World's First Satellites, Texas A&M University Press, 2004, Chapter 5X-minus 80 Days - JPL-Army Ballistic Missile Agency The University of Iowa (under The acoustic micrometeorite detector detected 145 impacts of cosmic dust in 78,750 seconds. The total mass of the satellite was 13.37 kilograms (30.80 lb), of which 8.3 kg (18.3 lb) were instrumentation. Data from Explorer 3 -- combined with earlier measurements from Explorer 1 -- confirmed Principal Investigator James Van Allen's theory that radiation belts trapped by Earth's magnetic field exist around the planet. The external skin of the instrument section was sandblasted stainless steel with white stripes. The original expected lifetime of the satellite before Sometimes the instrumentation reported the expected cosmic ray count (approximately 30 counts per second) but other times it would show a peculiar zero counts per second. About a week after NASA lost contact with the satellite, the US Air Force set their rocket’s sights on the tiny satellite and fired away. The final coloration was determined by studies of shadow–sunlight intervals based on firing time, The scientific instrumentation of Explorer 1 was designed and built under the direction of Dr. Interplanetary Superhighway Makes Space Travel Simpler Explorer 4 was designed to further investigate the radiation belt around Earth, discovered during the Explorer 1 and 3 missions.