The OLDEST Man Made Satellite STILL in Orbit

We all know we have a ton of satellites floating out in space some we know about some we may not know about some controlled by super villains I don't know and every so often we hear about new satellites launched into space but we never talked too much about the older ones. As you know mankind's race to reach and explore space and Lane the first man on the moon led to a wide array of technological advancements and significant scientific breakthroughs during the 20th century and one of the foremost efforts taken in pursuit of this goal was launching an artificial satellite as successfully orbited the earth.

In the 1950s both the US and the Soviet Union were obsessed with being the first to be the one to do so and it was to the surprise of the rest of the world when Russia managed to quietly launch what would become the first man-made satellite to orbit our planets Sputnik one consequently the u.s. lost the opportunity to claim a place in history as the country responsible for cheating this feat but while Americans can't pride themselves with being the first in this aspect of space exploration they do have the bragging rights we're building and launching into space the oldest artificial satellite that remains in orbit to this day.

What I'm referring to is the grapefruit satellite known as the Vanguard 1 the fourth man-made satellites ever to launch into space it orbits earth so a little background the Vanguard 1 was part of a program conceived by the United States Naval Research Laboratory work in RL back in 1955 called the Vanguard project at the time it was intended to be the country's first satellite program and the main goal was to launch a Vanguard rocket continue the first ever artificial satellite and successfully placed in an Earth's orbit this launch vehicle is comprised of a three-stage rocket which is supposed to be powerful enough to propel a scientific spacecraft beyond Earth's atmosphere and send it off to space the design of the Vanguard rocket system was adapted into the several rockets built and utilized by project Vanguard in the years 1957 till 1959 during so resulted in the successful launch emplacement of as many as three satellites into Earth's orbit among them of course the Vanguard won now the first Vanguard rocket was planned to blast off into space from Cape Canaveral however before the US Navy got far enough with a program the Soviet Union already completed develop its own rocket system and artificial orbital satellites and then proceeded to launch the rocket containing Sputnik one into orbit and of course in a time where tensions between the US and the Soviet Union were steadily rising the historical launch of Sputnik one symbolized the might and technological superiority of the Russians over the Americans because of this Western nations grew fearful and anxious over the possibility that the Soviet Union is now more technologically advanced than any other country in the world in this place immense public pressure on the US government to replicate and even surpassed a communist superpower sparking what came to be known as a space race between the two rivaling nations and so when the Vanguard project scheduled the test launch of Vanguard test vehicle 3 on December the 6th 1957 all eyes were on the US Navy and it became a public televised events.

However what was supposed to be an iconic display of American power turned into a devastating failure went just after a few seconds of liftoff the Vanguard atv-3 crashed and burned into flames then came Wernher von Braun a rocket scientist I used to work for Nazi Germany with the support of the US military Braun was working on the Jupiter rocket a launch vehicle largely influenced by the v2 ballistic missile he previously designed which he believed had enough power to fly past the Earth's atmosphere one of ron brown's jupiter launchers particularly the true no.1 rocket was positioned to send a new rocket into space and it took him just three months to finish building the satellite they named Explorer one so on the 31st of January 1958 the u.s. finally managed to successfully launch a satellite into orbit when the Explorer 1 lifted off and reached space after that it really didn't take too long for the US Navy's Vanguard a project to rise from the ashes and set out to officially launch their new satellite as well the Vanguard 1 though it will become the fourth man-made satellite to orbit Earth it was very unique compared to his predecessors because it was the first one ever to be powered by the Sun which meant that it had the potential to transmit data from space for several years which was unlike the other satellites which functioned for just a few months.

So on March 17th 1958 in aluminum sphere shaped satellites weighing only three pounds with a diameter of about six inches was lost via a Vanguard rocket system in placed into a elliptical orbit now this was a big deal because the release of Vanguard 1 into space served a purpose of test the effects of Space Environments on the satellites and all of his systems while still in Earth's orbit aside from that it was also meant to gather data Wow revolving around the planets and to accomplish this the satellite was equipped with transmitters powered by mercury battery and by solar cells it was also built with six antennas and featured two thermistors in order to monitor its internal temperature and assess how resistant it was to heat now the Vanguard one what's originally estimated to stay in orbit for more or less 2,000 years however after considering environmental factors such as atmospheric drag and solar radiation is now only expected to last well a few hundred years were just still a very long time it finally stopped transmitting data back to earth in 1964 seven years after its launch but even to this day it continues to circumnavigate earth and we'll be celebrating the 60th anniversary of its launch this March 2018 so while the Vanguard one was not the first satellite ever to orbit Earth is intrinsic value as a scientific innovation and the ROI played in the competitive space race between US and Russia is pretty significant so yeah if Hawkins is right and the earth is only habitable for another 100 years or so didn't least that little guy will still be up there.