Flight
The Juno I rocket was launched January 31, 1958, putting Explorer 1 into orbit with a perigee of 358 kilometers (222 mi) and an apogee of 2,550 kilometers (1,580 mi) having a period of 114.8 minutes. At about 1:30 a.m. ET, after confirming that Explorer 1 was indeed in orbit, a news conference was held in the Great Hall at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC to announce it to the world.
Mercury batteries powered the high-power transmitter for 31 days and the low-power transmitter for 105 days. Explorer 1 stopped transmission of data on May 23, 1958 when its batteries died, but remained in orbit for more than 12 years. It reentered the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean on March 31, 1970 after more than 58,000 orbits.
Read more about this topic: Explorer 1
Famous quotes containing the word flight:
“AIDS was ... an illness in stages, a very long flight of steps that led assuredly to death, but whose every step represented a unique apprenticeship. It was a disease that gave death time to live and its victims time to die, time to discover time, and in the end to discover life.”
—Hervé Guibert (1955–1991)
“When the flight is not high the fall is not heavy.”
—Chinese proverb.
“No Raven’s wing can stretch the flight so far
As the torn bandrols of Napoleon’s war.
Choose then your climate, fix your best abode,
He’ll make you deserts and he’ll bring you blood.
How could you fear a dearth? have not mankind,
Tho slain by millions, millions left behind?
Has not conscription still the power to weild
Her annual faulchion o’er the human field?
A faithful harvester!”
—Joel Barlow (1754–1812)