Jan. 31, 1958. Explorer 1 was circling Earth for the first time, proving that America could match the Soviets on the Cold War’s orbital frontier.
“We have firmly established our foothold in space,” Wernher von Braun declared. “We will never give it up again.”…
Full article at MSNBC
[The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s William Pickering, University of Iowa physicist James Van Allen and rocket scientist Wernher von Braun hold up a model of Explorer 1 at a news conference after hearing the satellite had reached orbit on Jan. 31, 1958.]