Explorer 1: first American satellite
1958 · Event
Four months after Sputnik, von Braun's Juno rocket answers — and Explorer 1's Geiger counter discovers the Van Allen radiation belts, spaceflight's first scientific discovery.
On these timelines: Spaceflight, The Space Race, Master, Science & Technology, USA
More from Spaceflight
- Apollo 8 orbits the Moon (1968)
- First Space Shuttle flight (1981)
- Goddard launches the first liquid-fuel rocket (1926)
- Apollo 17: the last Moon landing (1972)
- V-2: the first successful A-4 launch (1942)
- Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation (1903)
- Shenzhou 5: China's first astronaut (2003)
- Mir space station (1986)
Around 1958
- Cuban Revolutionary War (1953)
- Prague Spring (1968)
- US Civil Rights Movement (1954)
- The Troubles (1968)
- Korean War (1950)
- Suez Crisis (1956)
- Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)
- Apartheid (1948)
- Vietnam War (American phase) (1965)
- Six-Day War (1967)