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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.
Why not? They used the signal to measure atmospheric characteristics and the ionosphere. Sure it only went "beep-beep-beep", but it was the first time something went "beep-beep-beep" up there and at least some science was conducted.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
As long as its orbit is high enough not to have atmospheric drag, and it doesn't hit something, of course it's still in orbit. Without atmospheric drag, orbits can last for centuries.
What would be more interesting is if it is still operational after all these years, like OSCAR 7.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
My Uncle designed the communication and tracking systems for Vanguard (and later for NASA.)
It was cool going over to his house and into his basement office to look at the pictures of him with the Vanguard team, him with Wernher Von Braun, him with Eisenhower, him with the first astronauts, him with JFK, with LBJ, with John Glenn, etc. His retirement picture included a hand-drawn picture of him driving away in an old Model T with the Vanguard satellite bouncing in the back seat.
He was a really, really neat, unassuming guy who was fascinated with clocks. He must have had 200 of them in his basement of every shape and size.
Lived in a little town of 800 people.
I loved going to visit him as a kid.
The really cool thing to mention about OSCAR 7 is it died in 1981 due to a short in the batteries. On June 21, 2002, Pat G3IOR heard some telemetry of W3OHI, which was OSCAR-7 transmitting on the 2 meter band. A follow up by one of the designers decoded the telemetry and found it to be authentic.
21 years of being silent in space was long enough for the short to open and the satellite booted when light hit it's solar array. The controllers came back online and it started transmitting.
That's simply cool.
I wouldn't say it was a foolish insistence and in many way letting Russia launch the first satellite was a brilliant move on the part of the Eisenhower administration. The most significant thing is that by having Russia send a satellite over America, it established the overflight principle that low-Earth orbit was a separate domain in international law similar to international waters in the oceans.
A legitimate concern was that if America sent a satellite up into space, that any time it traveled over the Soviet Union that it would be treated as invading Soviet airspace. In theory that could be considered a casus belli for some sort of significant response that would provoke military action.
You could say ditto for even sending a crew member in orbit.
As a result of the Soviet Union sending the first satellite and then sending Yuri Gagarin over the USA at orbital altitudes, the USSR had no justification and reason to be objecting if the USA did the same thing over the USSR. IMHO that was utterly brilliant.... and at the same time making the USSR prance around like some sort of victory was achieved when in fact they gave up a major diplomatic point of order in international law. It really didn't cost the USA much of anything other than temporary prestige that is largely irrelevant today... and was completely made up for anyway with Neil Armstrong's landing on the Moon.
The goal of the Eisenhower administration was to send spy satellites over the USSR, something that happened not too much longer after Sputnik. Unlike what happened with Gary Powers and the U-2 plane getting shot down over the USSR, they had no reason to complain about satellites.
How is that foolish that Eisenhower waited to have the Explorer satellite launch few weeks after Sputnik?
The even cooler thing was that someone had gone to the trouble of renewing its license during those 21 years. The Mode B uplink uses a band that is no longer allocated for satellite service, and that renewal is the reason that there is now an FCC waiver for using it.
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