The Oldest Satellite
Project Vanguard was labeled a "flopnik" by the press, but Vanguard 1 remains the oldest artificial satellite orbiting Earth.
Blockhouse audio of the Vanguard 1 launch on March 17, 1958, 67 years ago today. Video source: Space SPAN YouTube channel.
NASA’s website marks October 4, 1957 as the birth of the Space Age, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial object to orbit Earth.
Much is forgotten about this time, largely due to the political mythology that survives.
One big myth is that it was a “race.”
A group of American and British scientists had lobbied the International Council of Scientific Unions to create an International Geophysical Year (IGY) to encourage the nations of Earth to conduct peaceful scientific research into the planet’s geological and physical characteristics. The IGY would run from July 1957 through December 1958.
In the summer of 1955, both the United States and the Soviet Union announced their nations would participate by launching the first artificial satellites. Neither declared a “race” because the research was supposedly peaceful; the results would be shared with the world. Each nation’s commitment would be satisfied to long as their satellite launched by December 31, 1958.
In Russian, sputnik means “satellite.” Their first satellite was called a prosteyshii sputnik, the “simplest satellite",” to emphasize to Kremlin executives the affordability of the device. The Soviets were somewhat secretive about the project, one reason being that their launch vehicle would be an R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile. The R-7 was still in development; Sergei Korolev, the Soviets’ lead rocket designer, suggested to Nikita Khrushchev that the R-7 be used to launch the first Sputnik, because some sort of payload would be needed to demonstrate the missile’s effectiveness. Khrushchev agreed, so long as the Sputnik project didn’t distract from R-7 development.
In the United States, Dwight Eisenhower insisted that the American program be civilian. The only rockets that existed at the time were military, built by American aerospace contractors, so the US government solicited proposals from the three military branches — Army, Navy, and Air Force.
The USAF proposal was based on the Atlas ICBM still in development, so it was unlikely to be ready for the IGY. The Army proposal, prepared by former German rocketeer Wernher von Braun, suggested adapting a Redstone short-range ballistic missile. Von Braun’s proposal was nowhere near as detailed as the proposal submitted by the Naval Research Laboratory, which was called Vanguard.
The Eisenhower administration selected the NRL’s Vanguard proposal. Many historical works have speculated why von Braun was spurned; the consensus seems to be that von Braun’s proposal was less detailed than the NRL’s, which relied on a new civilian rocket developed from scratch, rather than a military weapon.
Some in the US government foresaw the propaganda consequences if the Soviets launched first, but Eisenhower insisted the IGY not become a propaganda stunt for fear it might spur the Soviets to respond in kind, bloating military budgets for both nations.
The Soviets presented details of their proposal to an IGY conference in Washington, DC on September 30, 1957. Although they were circumspect about when it might launch, they did provide the radio frequencies Sputnik 1 would use to transmit its “beep beep” signal.
So Sputnik wasn’t really a surprise to those paying attention. But few had and, when the Soviets orbited a satellite over the United States on October 4, 1957, a slow panic set in. Sputnik 1 in itself was harmless, but the Soviets had demonstrated a functional intercontinental ballistic missile with the capability of launching a payload into space. (Striking a target with any precision was a different matter.) American politicians, pundits, and the media cranked up the hysteria to embarrass the Eisenhower administration. They claimed that American “prestige” was at stake, a nebulous word for which no tangible measurement was possible.
Project Vanguard, meanwhile, continued on its leisurely pace. Pressured by the media and political hysteria, the Eisenhower administration asked the Vanguard team to speed it up.
A series of test launches had been planned to build up to the real thing. Vanguard TV-3 (“TV” for Test Vehicle) was a 3 1/2 pound aluminum sphere housing a transmitter to send its own “beep beep” signals back to Earth.
Vanguard TV-3 fails just after launch on December 6, 1957. Video source: superpowerplay YouTube channel.
When TV-3 launched on December 6, 1957, a loose connection in a fuel line caused the first stage to lose power and fall back onto its launch pedestal, causing an explosion. The satellite itself, dented but still beeping, was found nearby in the palmetto scrub.
(TV-3 is now in the collection of the National Air and Space Museum.)
The New York Times on December 8, 1957 reported on international reaction to the Vanguard “flopnik.”
The Eisenhower administration gave permission to von Braun and his Army Ballistic Missile Agency to move ahead with its plan to launch a satellite, cobbled together from spare Vanguard parts, atop a modified Redstone. Explorer 1 launched on January 31, 1958 from Launch Pad 26A at the Cape Canaveral Air Force station.
The American public, and the world, largely forgot about Vanguard. But the Vanguard team continued with their work. Explorer 1 technically had honored the American commitment to launch an IGY satellite, but Vanguard was the program of record.
After another failure on February 5, 1958, Vanguard finally launched a satellite into orbit 67 years ago today, March 17, 1958, from the Cape’s Launch Pad 18A. Named Vanguard 1, it was the first satellite to use solar cells for power. Its battery-powered transmitter worked until June 1958, while its solar-powered transmitter functioned until May 1964.
The front page of the March 18, 1958 New York Times. The headline read, “Navy Puts Vanguard in Orbit; 2d U.S. Satellite Up 2,513 Miles; Expected to Last 5 to 10 Years.”
Vanguard 1 is still in orbit. Its orbit is so perfect that current estimates forecast it will remain in space until about the year 2200. What happened to its three predecessors? They all burned up on reentry into the atmosphere.
Sputnik 1 reentered on January 4, 1958.
Sputnik 2 reentered on April 14, 1958, carrying the remains of its specimen dog Laika.
Explorer 1 reentered on March 31, 1970.
NASA began on October 1, 1958, near the end of Project Vanguard and the IGY. Vanguard was transferred to the new agency along with several other peaceful space programs in the military.
NASA published an official Vanguard history in 1970. It noted some of the US IGY program’s achievements:
Determining that Earth had a bulge.
Finding that the atmosphere was more extensive and variable than believed.
Proving the existence of what came to be known as the Van Allen radiation belts.
Vanguard proved several American technical superiorities — the solar cells, miniaturized circuits and batteries, and the use of hypergolic propellants in the upper stages. Hypergolic chemicals spontaneously ignite without a heat source, eliminating the need for an igniter to work at higher altitudes and speeds.
Please take the time to listen to the audio recording at the top of this article. You will hear the Vanguard engineers in the blockhouse as they make history — a history that has been all but forgotten.