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Project Vanguard was the name of the program that was to have launched the first satellites from the United States.
In August 1955, the DOD Committee on Special Capabilities chose the NRL proposal as it appeared most likely to, by spring 1958, fulfill the following:
Project Vanguard was chosen from three proposals presented by the United States Air Force, the United States Army, and the United States Navy. The Army's ABMA under Dr. Wernher Von Braun had suggested using a modified Redstone rocket (see: Juno I) while the Air Force had proposed using the non-existent Atlas rocket.
Vanguard I, the world's longest orbiting man-made satellite, built by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and launched at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in 1958, marked its 45th year in space on March 17, 2003. In the years following Vanguard's launch, the small satellite has made more than 178,061 revolutions of the Earth and traveled over 5.1 billion nautical miles (9.4 billion km).
The first solar-powered satellite, Vanguard I was the second artificial satellite successfully placed in Earth orbit by the United States. (Vanguard's predecessors, Sputniks I and II and Explorer I have long since fallen out of orbit.) Just six inches (152 mm) in diameter and weighing just 3 pounds (1.4 kg), Vanguard I was described by then-Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev as "the grapefruit satellite."
As part of the scientific program for the International Geophysical Year (1957 - 1958), NRL was officially delegated the responsibility of placing an artificial satellite with a scientific experiment into orbit around the Earth. Designated Project Vanguard, the program was placed under Navy management and DoD monitorship.
NRL was responsible for developing the launch vehicles; developing and installing the satellite tracking system; and designing, constructing, and testing the satellites. The tracking system was called Minitrack. The Minitrack stations, designed, built, and initially operated by NRL, were along a North-South line running along the east coast of North America and the west coast of South America. Minitrack was the forerunner of another NRL-developed system called NAVSPASUR, which is operational today and a major producer of spacecraft tracking data.
In late 1958, responsibility for Project Vanguard was transferred to NASA, forming the nucleus of the Goddard Space Flight Center. After the transfer, NRL rebuilt their spacecraft technology capability and have developed some 87 satellites over the past 40 years for the Navy, DoD and NASA.
Vanguard met 100 percent of its scientific objectives, providing a wealth of information on the size and shape of the Earth, air density, temperature ranges, and micrometeorite impact. It proved that the Earth is pear-shaped, not round; corrected ideas about the atmosphere's density at high altitudes and improved the accuracy of world maps.
NRL space scientists say that the Vanguard I program introduced much of the technology that has since been applied in later U.S. satellite programs, from rocket launching to satellite tracking. For example, it proved that solar cells could be used for several years to power radio transmitters. Vanguard's solar cells operated for about seven years, while conventional batteries used to power another onboard transmitter lasted only 20 days.
Although Vanguard's solar-powered "voice" became silent in 1964, it continues to serve the scientific community. Ground-based tracking of the satellite provides data concerning the effects of the Sun, Moon and atmosphere on satellite orbits.
The Vanguard rocket launched 3 satellites out of 11 launch attempts:
The Navy proposed designing a rocket system based on the Viking and Aerobee rocket systems, for the purposes of launching the first US satellite.
The Naval Research Laboratory was given overall responsibility for the project while funding came from the National Science Foundation. The 1.4 kg spherical Vanguard satellites (designated "Test Vehicles" prior to launch) were built at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, and contained as their payload seven mercury cell batteries in a hermetically sealed container, two tracking radio transmitters, a temperature sensitive crystal, and six clusters of solar cells on the surface of the sphere.
On October 4, 1957, the Vanguard team learned of the launch of Sputnik I by the USSR while still working on a test vehicle (TV-2) designed to test the first stage of their launcher rocket. After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik II, on November 3, 1957, the Secretary of Defense directed the Army to use the Juno I and launch a satellite. At 11:45 AM on December 6 an attempt was made to launch TV-3; the rocket rose about four feet into the air, then immediately sank back down to the launch pad and exploded. The payload nosecone detached in the process and landed free of the exploding rocket. The satellite was too damaged for further use; it now resides in the National Air and Space Museum. On February 1, the ABMA managed to launch the Explorer I satellite.
On March 17, 1958, the program successfully launched the Vanguard satellite TV-4. TV-4 achieved a stable orbit with an apogee of 2466 miles (3,969 km) and a perigee of 404 miles (650 km); it was estimated that it would remain in orbit for 240 years, and Vanguard 1 remains the oldest satellite still in orbit at this time. The radio continued to transmit until 1965, and tracking data obtained with this satellite revealed that Earth is not quite round - it is elevated at the North Pole and flattened at the South Pole. The Vanguard program was transferred to NASA when that agency was created in mid-1958. The program ended with the launch of Vanguard 3 in 1959.
Vanguard met 100 percent of its scientific objectives, providing a wealth of information on the size and shape of Earth, air density, temperature ranges, and micrometeorite impact. It proved that solar cells could be used for several years to power radio transmitters, with its solar cells operating for about seven years. Ground-based tracking of the now-inert Vanguards continues to provide information about the effects of the Sun, Moon and atmosphere on satellite orbits.
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