Project Vanguard was a program managed by the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

Naval Research Laboratory The United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is the corporate research laboratory for the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps. It was founded in 1923 and conducts basic scientific research, applied research, technologic ...

(NRL), which intended to launch the first

artificial satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisoto ...

into

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an orbit around Earth with a period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial objects in outer space are in LEO, with an altitude never m ...

using a Vanguard rocket. as the

launch vehicle A launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket designed to carry a payload ( spacecraft or satellites) from the Earth's surface to outer space. Most launch vehicles operate from a launch pads, supported by a launch control center and sys ...

from Cape Canaveral Missile Annex,

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and ...

. In response to the launch of

Sputnik 1 Sputnik 1 (; see § Etymology) was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for ...

on 4 October 1957, the U.S. restarted the Explorer program, which had been proposed earlier by the

Army Ballistic Missile Agency The Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) was formed to develop the U.S. Army's first large ballistic missile. The agency was established at Redstone Arsenal on 1 February 1956, and commanded by Major General John B. Medaris with Wernher von ...

(ABMA). Privately, however, the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

(CIA) and

President Dwight D. Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...

were aware of progress being made by the

Soviets Soviet people ( rus, сове́тский наро́д, r=sovyétsky naród), or citizens of the USSR ( rus, гра́ждане СССР, grázhdanye SSSR), was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union. Nationality policy in ...

on Sputnik from secret spy plane imagery. Together with the

Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, La Cañada Flintridge, California ...

(JPL), ABMA built

Explorer 1 Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States in 1958 and was part of the U.S. participation in the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The mission followed the first two satellites the previous year; the Soviet Union's S ...

and launched it on 1 February 1958 ( UTC). Before work was completed, however, the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

launched a second satellite,

Sputnik 2 Sputnik 2 (, russian: Спутник-2, ''Satellite 2''), or Prosteyshiy Sputnik 2 (PS-2, russian: Простейший Спутник 2, italic=yes, ''Simplest Satellite 2'') was the second spacecraft launched into Earth orbit, on 3 November 195 ...

, on 3 November 1957. Meanwhile, the spectacular televised failure of Vanguard TV3 on 6 December 1957, deepened American dismay over the country's position in the

Space Race The Space Race was a 20th-century competition between two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, to achieve superior spaceflight capability. It had its origins in the ballistic missile-based nuclear arms race between the t ...

. On 17 March 1958,

Vanguard 1 Vanguard 1 (Harvard designation: 1958-Beta 2, COSPAR ID: 1958-005B ) is an American satellite that was the fourth artificial Earth-orbiting satellite to be successfully launched, following Sputnik 1, Sputnik 2, and Explorer 1. It was laun ...

became the second artificial satellite successfully placed in a low Earth orbit by the United States. It was the first

solar-powered Solar power is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV) or indirectly using concentrated solar power. Photovoltaic cells convert light into an electric current using the photovoltaic ef ...

satellite. Just in diameter and weighing , Vanguard 1 was described by then-

Soviet Premier The Premier of the Soviet Union (russian: Глава Правительства СССР) was the head of government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The office had four different names throughout its existence: Chairman of th ...

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...

as, "The grapefruit satellite". Vanguard 1, and the upper stage of its launch vehicle, are the oldest artificial satellites still in space, as Vanguard's predecessors, Sputnik 1, Sputnik 2, and Explorer 1, have decayed from orbit.

Project history

In the early 1950s, the

American Rocket Society The American Rocket Society (ARS) began its existence on , under the name of the American Interplanetary Society. It was founded by science fiction writers G. Edward Pendray, David Lasser, Laurence Manning, Nathan Schachner, and others. Pendra ...

set up an ad hoc Committee on Space Flight, of which Milton W. Rosen, NRL project manager for the Viking rocket, became chair. Encouraged by conversations between Richard W. Porter of

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable ene ...

and

Alan T. Waterman Alan Tower Waterman (June 4, 1892 – November 30, 1967) was an American physicist. Biography Born in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, he grew up in Northampton, Massachusetts. His father was a professor of physics at Smith College. Alan also ...

, Director of the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

(NSF), Rosen on 27 November 1954, completed a report describing the potential value of launching an Earth satellite. The report was submitted to the NSF early in 1955. As part of planning for the

International Geophysical Year The International Geophysical Year (IGY; french: Année géophysique internationale) was an international scientific project that lasted from 1 July 1957 to 31 December 1958. It marked the end of a long period during the Cold War when scientific i ...

(1957–1958), the U.S. publicly undertook to place an artificial satellite with a scientific experiment into orbit around the Earth.

The three services' proposals

Proposals to do this were presented by the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Si ...

(USAF), the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, ...

(USA), and the

(USN). The Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) under Dr.

Wernher von Braun Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun ( , ; 23 March 191216 June 1977) was a German and American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was a member of the Nazi Party and Allgemeine SS, as well as the leading figure in the develop ...

had suggested using a modified

Redstone rocket The PGM-11 Redstone was the first large American ballistic missile. A short-range ballistic missile (SRBM), it was in active service with the United States Army in West Germany from June 1958 to June 1964 as part of NATO's Cold War defense of W ...

(see:

Juno I The Juno I was a four-stage American space launch vehicle, used to launch lightweight payloads into low Earth orbit. The launch vehicle was used between January 1958 to December 1959. The launch vehicle was a member of the Redstone launch ve ...

) while the Air Force had proposed using the Atlas launch vehicle, which did not yet exist. The Navy proposed designing a

rocket A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entir ...

system based on the

Viking Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

and Aerobee rocket systems. The Air Force proposal was not seriously considered, as Atlas development was years behind the other vehicles. Among other limitations, the Army submission focused on the launch vehicle, while a payload was assumed to become available from the

(JPL), and the network of ground tracking stations was assumed to be a Navy project. The Navy proposal detailed all three aspects of the mission.

The Navy's project

In August 1955, the US DOD Committee on Special Capabilities chose the Navy's proposal as it appeared most likely, by spring 1958, to fulfill the following: # Place a satellite in orbit during the

. # Accomplish a

scientific Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

experiment An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs whe ...

in orbit. # Track the satellite and ensure its attainment of orbit. Another consideration was that the Navy proposal used civilian

sounding rocket A sounding rocket or rocketsonde, sometimes called a research rocket or a suborbital rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital flight. The rockets are used to ...

s rather than military missiles, which were considered inappropriate for peaceful scientific exploration. What went unstated at the time was that the U.S. already had a covert satellite program underway, WS-117, which was developing the ability to launch spy satellites using USAF Thor IRBMs. The US government was concerned that the Soviets would object to military satellites overflying the Soviet Union as they had to various aircraft incursions and the balloons of the Genetrix project. The idea was that if a clearly "civilian" and "scientific" satellite went up first, the Soviets might not object, and thus the precedent would be established that space was above national boundaries. Designated Project Vanguard, the program was placed under Navy management and DoD monitorship. The

(NRL) in Washington was given overall responsibility, while initial funding came from the

. The director was John P. Hagen (1908–1990), an astronomer who in 1958 would become the assistant director of space flight development with the formation of

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...

. After a delay due to the NRL changing the shape of the satellite from a conical shape, the initial spherical Vanguard satellites were built at the NRL, and contained as their payload seven mercury cell batteries in a

hermetically sealed A hermetic seal is any type of sealing that makes a given object airtight (preventing the passage of air, oxygen, or other gases). The term originally applied to airtight glass containers, but as technology advanced it applied to a larger categor ...

container, two tracking radio transmitters, a temperature sensitive crystal, and six clusters of

solar cell A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell, is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect, which is a physical and chemical phenomenon.

s on the surface of the sphere. The first satellite was called Vanguard TV3. NRL was also responsible for developing the Vanguard rocket launch vehicles through a contract to the Martin Company (which had built the Viking rockets), developing and installing the satellite tracking system, and designing, constructing, and testing the satellites. The tracking system was called

Minitrack The Minitrack Network was the first U.S. satellite tracking network to become operational, in 1957. It was used to track the flights of Sputnik, Vanguard, Explorer, and other early space efforts. Minitrack was the progenitor of Spacecraft Trackin ...

. The Minitrack stations, designed by NRL but subcontracted to the Army Corps of Engineers, were 14 stations 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 remains operational today under the control of the Air Force and is a major producer of spacecraft tracking data.

Sputnik and Explorer 1

The original schedule called for the TV3 to be launched during the month of September 1957, but because of delays this did not happen. On October 4, 1957, the Vanguard team learned of the launch of

by the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nati ...

while still working on a test vehicle (TV-2) designed to test the first stage of their launcher rocket. While demoralizing to the Vanguard team, Minitrack was successful in tracking Sputnik, a major success for NRL. At 11:44:35 a.m. on December 6, an attempt was made to launch TV-3. The Vanguard rocket rose about into the air when the engine lost thrust, and the rocket immediately sank back down to the launch pad and exploded. The payload nosecone detached and landed free of the exploding rocket, the small satellite's radio beacon still beeping. The satellite was too damaged for further use; it now resides in the

National Air and Space Museum The National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, also called the Air and Space Museum, is a museum in Washington, D.C., in the United States. Established in 1946 as the National Air Museum, it opened its main building on the N ...

. After the Soviet Union launched

, on November 3, 1957, then

Secretary of Defense A defence minister or minister of defence is a cabinet official position in charge of a ministry of defense, which regulates the armed forces in sovereign states. The role of a defence minister varies considerably from country to country; in so ...

Neil H. McElroy directed the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

to use the

and launch a satellite. On January 31, 1958, the U.S. Army launched the

satellite. With the launch of Sputnik 1 and 2 the previous concern, the right of satellite overflight, had become moot: those satellites were launched by an early version of the Soviet

R-7 rocket The R-7 family of rockets (russian: Р-7) is a series of rockets, derived from the Soviet R-7 Semyorka, the world's first ICBM. More R-7 rockets have been launched than any other family of large rockets. When Soviet nuclear warheads became ligh ...

, the basis of the USSR's early ICBMs, and definitely military, as well as roughly 40 times larger than the Vanguard launcher. On March 17, 1958, the program successfully launched the Vanguard satellite TV-4. TV-4 achieved a stable orbit with an

apogee An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any el ...

of and a

perigee An apsis (; ) is the farthest or nearest point in the orbit of a planetary body about its primary body. For example, the apsides of the Earth are called the aphelion and perihelion. General description There are two apsides in any el ...

of . It was estimated that it would remain in orbit for at least 240 years, and it was renamed Vanguard I, which in addition to its upper launch stage remains the oldest human-made satellite still in orbit. In late 1958, with responsibility for Project Vanguard having been transferred to

, the nucleus of the

Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C. in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC empl ...

was formed. After four failed launches, the program once again succeeded with SLV-4, renamed Vanguard II. After two more failures, the program ended with the launch of Vanguard III in 1959.

Accomplishments

Despite being overshadowed by

, and having to overcome the widespread humiliation of its unsuccessful early attempts, the Vanguard Project eventually met its scientific objectives, providing a wealth of information on the size and shape of the

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's sur ...

density of air The density of air or atmospheric density, denoted '' ρ'', is the mass per unit volume of Earth's atmosphere. Air density, like air pressure, decreases with increasing altitude. It also changes with variation in atmospheric pressure, temperature a ...

, temperature ranges, and micrometeorite impact. The Vanguard 1 radio continued to transmit until 1964, and tracking data obtained with this satellite revealed that Earth is not quite a perfect sphere: it is slightly pear-shaped, elevated at the

North Pole The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distinguish from the Ma ...

and flattened at the

South Pole The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole, Terrestrial South Pole or 90th Parallel South, is one of the two points where Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on Earth and lies antipod ...

. It corrected ideas about the atmosphere's density at high altitudes and improved the accuracy of world maps. The Vanguard program was transferred to NASA when that agency was created in mid-1958. The Vanguard "Satellite Launch Vehicle", a term invented for the operational SLV rockets as opposed to the Test Vehicle TV versions, was a much smaller and lighter launcher than the Redstone-based

Jupiter-C The Jupiter-C was an American research and development vehicle developed from the Jupiter-A. Jupiter-C was used for three unmanned sub-orbital spaceflights in 1956 and 1957 to test re-entry nosecones that were later to be deployed on the more ...

/ Juno 1 rocket which launched the

Explorer Exploration refers to the historical practice of discovering remote lands. It is studied by geographers and historians. Two major eras of exploration occurred in human history: one of convergence, and one of divergence. The first, covering most ...

satellites, or the immense R-7 that the

used to launch the early Sputniks. The Vanguard 1 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 validated in flight that

s 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 on-board transmitter lasted only 20 days. Although Vanguard's solar-powered "voice" became silent in 1964, it continues to serve the scientific community. Ground-based optical tracking of the now-inert Vanguards continues to provide information about the effects of the Sun,

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

, and

Atmosphere of Earth The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing fo ...

on satellite orbits. Vanguard 1 marked its 50th year in space on 17 March 2008. In the years following its launch, the small satellite has made more than 196,990 revolutions of the Earth and traveled , the distance from Earth to beyond the

dwarf planet A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit of the Sun, smaller than any of the eight classical planets but still a world in its own right. The prototypical dwarf planet is Pluto. The interest of dwarf planets to ...

Pluto Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of trans-Neptunian object, bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the S ...

and halfway back. Original estimates had the orbit lasting for 2,000 years, but it was discovered that solar radiation pressure and atmospheric drag during high levels of solar activity produced significant perturbations in the

height of the satellite, which caused a significant decrease in its expected lifetime to about 240 years.

Launch history

; Test vehicle launches The first Vanguard flight, a successful

suborbital A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that it will not complete one orbital ...

test of the

Vanguard TV0 Vanguard TV-0, also called Vanguard Test Vehicle-Zero, was the first sub-orbital test flight of a Vanguard rocket as part of the Project Vanguard. Project Vanguard was a program managed by the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), an ...

single-stage vehicle, was launched on 8 December 1956. On 1 May 1957, the two-stage test vehicle TV1 was successfully launched. Vanguard TV2, another successful suborbital test, was launched 23 October 1957. The Vanguard rocket launched three satellites out of eleven launch attempts: # Vanguard TV3 - 6 December 1957 - Failed to orbit satellite - low tank pressure caused engine cutoff T+2 seconds # Vanguard TV3 Backup - 5 February 1958 - Failed to orbit satellite - control failure caused vehicle breakup T+55 seconds # ''

- 17 March 1958 - Orbited satellite'' # Vanguard TV5 - 28 April 1958 - Failed to orbit satellite - 3rd stage separation failure #

Vanguard SLV-1 Vanguard SLV-1, also called Vanguard Satellite Launch Vehicle-1 was hoped to be the second successful flight of the American Vanguard rocket following the successful launch of the Vanguard 1 satellite on rocket Vanguard TV-4 in March 1958. B ...

- 27 May 1958 - Failed to orbit 9.98 kg satellite - 2nd stage attitude control failure prevented the 3rd stage from entering the correct angle for orbital insertion # Vanguard SLV 2 - 26 June 1958 - Failed to orbit 9.98 kg satellite - 2nd stage lost thrust after only 8 seconds of burning due to fuel line obstruction # Vanguard SLV 3 - 28 September 1958 - Failed to orbit 9.98 kg satellite - 2nd stage insufficient thrust for orbital insertion due to fuel line obstruction # ''

Vanguard 2 Vanguard 2 (or Vanguard 2E before launch) is an Earth-orbiting satellite launched 17 February 1959 at 15:55:02 GMT, aboard a Vanguard SLV-4 rocket as part of the United States Navy's Project Vanguard. The satellite was designed to measure clo ...

- 17 February 1959 - Orbited satellite'' # Vanguard SLV 5 - 13 April 1959 - Failed to orbit satellite - 2nd stage hydraulics failure led to loss of control # Vanguard SLV 6 - 22 June 1959 - Failed to orbit 10.3 kg satellite - 2nd stage exploded due to stuck helium vent valve # ''

Vanguard 3 Vanguard 3 (Harvard designation: 1959 Eta 1) is a scientific satellite that was launched into Earth orbit by the Vanguard SLV-7 on 18 September 1959, the third successful Vanguard launch out of eleven attempts. Vanguard rocket: Vanguard Satell ...

- 18 September 1959 - Orbited satellite''

References

* ''Vanguard: a History'', Constance Green and Milton Lomask, NASA SP-4202, Government Printing Office, Washington D.C., 1970 * ''Project Vanguard'', Kurt Stehling, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, N.Y., 1961 * ''Nova - Sputnik Declassified'', Ref:Paul Dickson, Author - ''Sputnik: The Shock of the Century'' * *

External links

''Vanguard - A History'' (NASA SP-4202, 1970) online book

(many of which are on-line)

{{Authority control NASA programs

Vanguard The vanguard (also called the advance guard) is the leading part of an advancing military formation. It has a number of functions, including seeking out the enemy and securing ground in advance of the main force. History The vanguard derives f ...