Explorer I: "Army Satellites" 1958 US Army The Big Picture TV-397

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'First complete documentary on Explorers I and III produced for "THE BIG PICTURE" -- "Army Satellites" reveals the dramatic, suspenseful story of how the Army--when the prestige of the United States throughout the world had been shaken by events beyond its control--stirred the hearts and emotions of the American people with an epic display of scientific and technical teamwork. The story depicts the drama of the crucial 84 days before launching Explorer I. The story begins on the morning of November 8, 1957, at Huntsville, Alabama. THE BIG PICTURE cameras cover a sudden meeting called by Major General John B. Medaris with his staff which included Dr. Wernher von Braun. From this point, the film develops with dramatic sequences leading into the final "countdown" in the blockhouse at Cape Canaveral, Florida. "Army Satellites" is an actual step-by-step documentary filmed over a five month period by Army Signal Corps cameramen and is narrated by Alexander Scourby. With this issue of THE BIG PICTURE, the series has reached a total of 229 individual episodes since it started in 1951 as a public service feature for television stations totaling 328 in the United States.'

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorer_1

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States, and was part of the U.S. participation in the International Geophysical Year. The mission followed the first two satellites the previous year; the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 and 2, beginning the Cold War Space Race between the two nations.

Explorer 1 was launched on January 31, 1958 at 22:48 Eastern Time (February 1, 03:48 UTC) atop the first Juno booster from LC-26 at the Cape Canaveral Missile Annex, Florida. It was the first spacecraft to detect the Van Allen radiation belt, returning data until its batteries were exhausted after nearly four months. It remained in orbit until 1970, and has been followed by more than 90 scientific spacecraft in the Explorer series.

Explorer 1 was given Satellite Catalog Number 4, and the Harvard designation 1958 Alpha 1,[3] the forerunner to the modern International Designator...

The U.S. Earth satellite program began in 1954 as a joint U.S. Army and U.S. Navy proposal, called Project Orbiter, to put a scientific satellite into orbit during the International Geophysical Year. The proposal, using a military Redstone missile, was rejected in 1955 by the Eisenhower administration in favor of the Navy's Project Vanguard, using a booster advertised as more civilian in nature. Following the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, the initial Project Orbiter program was revived as the Explorer program to catch up with the Soviet Union.

Explorer 1 was designed and built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), while a Jupiter-C rocket was modified by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) to accommodate a satellite payload; the resulting rocket known as the Juno I. The Jupiter-C design used for the launch had already been flight-tested in nose cone reentry tests for the Jupiter IRBM, and was modified into Juno I. Working closely together, ABMA and JPL completed the job of modifying the Jupiter-C and building Explorer 1 in 84 days. However, before work was completed, the Soviet Union launched a second satellite, Sputnik 2, on November 3, 1957. The U.S. Navy's attempt to put the first U.S. satellite into orbit failed with the launch of the Vanguard TV3 on December 6, 1957...