The World's Oldest Scientific Satellite is Still in Orbit (bbc.com)

walterbyrd writes: Nearly 60 years ago, the US Navy launched Vanguard-1 as a response to the Soviet Sputnik. Six decades on, it's still circling our planet. Conceived by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in 1955, Vanguard was to be America's first satellite programme. The Vanguard system consisted of a three-stage rocket designed to launch a civilian scientific spacecraft. The rocket, satellite and an ambitious network of tracking stations would form part of the US contribution to the 1957-58 International Geophysical Year. This global collaboration of scientific research involved 67 nations, including both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Comments

Scientific, yes, but no longer with us

[Latent Heat]

From Wikipedia,

"Sputnik burned up on 4 January 1958 while reentering Earth's atmosphere, after three months, 1440 completed orbits of the Earth,[1] and a distance travelled of about 70 million km (43 million mi).[10]"

Re:The most stupid title.

[Strider-]

Actually it was. The use of two radio frequencies in its transmission (20MHz and 40MHz) allowed the density of the ionosphere to be determined by receivers on the ground. The spherical shape was chosen so that it could be used to map the density of the upper atmosphere. It also provided information on the near space environment, as the internal temperature and pressure of the satellite could vary the duration of the beeps.

So yes, it was a scientific satellite, albeit a very basic one. It, of course, was also a big political F-U to the west, but that's realistically been the case for most things that have been done in the space age, especially the early part.