The JPL Library and Archives is planning a series of video-showings at the Hub during lunch timse this Summer.  We will begin with the JPL 75th Anniversary “Beginnings of the Space Age” series, produced by Blaine Baggett and his team at JPL.  Bring your lunch, come to the Hub, enjoy!

Explorer One

This document reveals how JPL and the U.S. Army could have been the first to place a satellite into Earth orbit, had they been given the chance. That opportunity was lost when the Eisenhower administration, unsure how the Soviet Union would react to a satellite launched under the aegis of the U. S. Army military, hesitated and assigned the project to a civilian-led program called Vanguard.  The Soviet launched Sputnik in October 1957, shocking the world and setting in motion the Cold War’s “Race for Space.” Only after the Vanguard rocked exploded on the launch p[ad were JPL and the U.S. Army given a chance. The result was 1958′s Explorer 1, the first successful U.S. satellite, which also delivered the first-ever scientific discovery from space.