Today the US Celebrates 50 Years of Space Exploration
With a brilliant flash and billowing smoke on the night of January 31, 1958, America's aspirations in space were dramatically unleashed in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The country had recently been humiliated when the Soviet Union put two Sputnik satellites in orbit in the fall of 1957. The wound deepened when a Navy-funded rocket called Vanguard exploded on the launch pad a few weeks later. The nation was ecstatic when the US successfully launch a Jupiter-C rocket carrying Explorer 1 -- the first United States satellite. The satellite not only salvaged national honor, but also yielded the first major scientific discovery of the space age: discovery of the Van Allen radiation belt surrounding the Earth.
