Sixty years ago next week, the hopes of Cold War America soared into the night sky as a rocket lofted skyward above Cape Canaveral, a soon-to-be-famous barrier island off the Florida coast. The date ...

Maj. Gen. John Medaris was not amused. Nearly four months earlier, the Soviet Union had stunned the world with the launch of Sputnik 1, the first man-made satellite, on Oct. 4, 1957. Sputnik 2, ...

Explorer 1 was front-page news across the U.S. The first successful U.S. satellite was often called a "moon" or a "man-made moon" then. American journalist and anchorman Walter Cronkite uses models to ...

Explorer 1 became the first successfully launched satellite by the United States when it was sent to space on 31 January 1958. A quick response to the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik 1, Explorer 1’s ...

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