We Travel The Speaceways + 50 Years

An experimental satellite launched in the first months of the space race is about to celebrate 50 years in orbit. Vanguard I is the oldest surviving man-made satellite in space and was the first to provide measurements showing the Earth is slightly pear-shaped instead of perfectly round.

When the 50th anniversary of the US satellite’s launch on March 17, 1958, arrives on Monday it will have made more than 196,990 Earth orbits. At 6in in diameter and 3lb in weight, it was dubbed “the grapefruit satellite” by Nikita Khrushchev, then the leader of the Soviet Union. But while tiny by modern standards, and small compared to the 23in-long Sputnik 1 launched the previous October, its achievements were enormous. It was the first to use solar power and it sent back a wealth of information on the size of the Earth, its air density and temperatures.

Much more here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3556160.ece