U.S. Satellite Vanguard Photo U.S. Navy
Sometimes the path it takes to get somewhere can be long or short, bumpy or smooth…
On December 6, 1957, hot on the heels of Sputnik, the United States Navy readied the first American satellite, Vanguard, for launch. The grapefruit-sized device lofted 3 feet from Earth before it exploded. Press and public jeered, dubbing it “Flopnik.” (“The exact cause is classified,” says the crisp narrator in a vintage video [below] of the attempt.) A red-faced U.S. government redoubled their efforts. Within a year and a half, Vanguard’s replacement took the first measurements of Earth’s upper atmosphere and its successor, Vanguard II, the first scan of Earth’s clouds. Meanwhile, NASA, the agency charged with managing this new technology, was born.
"Oh, what a flopnik! The Vanguard rocket that held the satellite failed miserably, blowing up before take-off."
Spaceborne observation of the planet has come a long way since Flopnik. Today, 150 Earth-observation satellites are in orbit, capturing more than 10 terabytes of information per day. NASA operates, in whole or in part, about 20 of them. The legacy of NASA's first assignment has radically altered our concept of the planet. In the view from space, political boundaries dissolve, Earth’s parts become a whole, and its changes are made visible and real.
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