EXPLORER ONE In answer to the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik One, America would launch its first satellite, Explorer One, on the 1st of February 1958, four months after the Russian launch. Unlike Sputnik which was only designed to transmit a simple radio signal, Explorer One would be designed to carry out scientific experiments and transmit the data back to Earth. Launched atop a converted US military missile, the Jupiter C, Explorer One would help to discover the Van Allen Belt, a band of radiation which surrounds the Earth. After 58,376 orbits of the planet the Explorer would stop transmitting data on the 23rd of May 1958 and finally re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and burn up on the 31st of March 1970. New Series Introduction - Day Two Following on from yesterday and my introduction to the new interlocking, multi-part series which will have its beginnings next Monday The years from 2010 onwards, and the effective end of the space shuttle programme have not been kind to NASA. With the Constellation Programme cancelled by the US Government, a programme which NASA hoped would follow the end of the shuttle programme, and would take America firstly back into space, and then onward back to the Moon, and from there onward to Mars, NASA is now tasked with trying to work in partnership with contractors within the aero-space industry to develop a new generation of spacecraft which are intended to take American astronauts back into Earth orbit. So far the results have been less than exciting. To be continued.