Looking Back On The Explorer I Launch of 1958 (Credit:NASA)

On January 31, 1958, the United States successfully launched the Explorer I satellite. As the country’s first successful satellite, Explorer I effectively marked the beginning of the U.S. Space Age.  Additionally, the launch of Explorer I came as a direct response to the Soviet Union’s launching of Sputnik 1 & 2, launching the U.S into what was known as the Space Race.  Following the success of Explorer I, the U.S. began developing and launching additional satellites, eventually paving the way for the satellites used in meteorology today.
In October of 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I, prompting the United States to quickly develop a satellite in response.  The Jet Propulsion Laboratory was given the task of designing and building a satellite that would serve as the payload for the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency’s Jupiter C rocket.  On the Explorer I satellite was a cosmic ray detector which was designed with the purpose of measuring the radiation environment in Earth’s orbit.  Following the success of this launch, additional Explorer satellites were launched, some being successful launches and some not.  Eventually, satellites such as Explorer VI and Explorer VII included weather related experiments. 
On February 2, 1959, roughly a year after the successful launch of Explorer I, the first weather satellite, Vanguard 2, was launched. However, this satellite was not considered to be a major success as the poor axis of rotation coupled with the elliptical orbit limited the amount of useful data collected.  The following year on April 1, 1960, the first successful weather satellite, TIROS-1, was launched.  In the years since then, numerous different weather satellites have been launched, leading up to the GOES satellites currently used in meteorology.  All of these satellites were made possible due to that first successful satellite launch on this day in 1958.

To learn more about other past historic weather and science events from around the world, be sure to click here!
 
©2019 Meteorologist Stephanie Edwards