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[b]Space Cover 680: Explorer 1: The US Joins the Space Race[/b] This week's space cover was hand canceled at Port Canaveral on January 31, 1958, and carries a detailed Zaso cachet for the launch of Explorer 1, America's first satellite. It has also been autographed by Dr. James Van Allen, the principal investigator of the onboard cosmic ray detector. The Army rocket team under Wernher von Braun had experimented with military Redstone missiles carrying upper stages that could nearly reach orbital velocity in the mid 1950's. They knew that adding a fourth stage would reach orbital velocity, but they were told not to do that in favor of the more-civilian-oriented Vanguard satellite effort. However, after the Soviet Union launched Sputniks 1 and 2, and the US suffered the humiliation of the dramatic launch failure of Vanguard TV-3 on December 6, 1957, the US needed a jumpstart to keep up with the Russians. The Army told von Braun to proceed with his efforts using a Redstone with upper stages (also known as Jupiter-C) to orbit a satellite. The satellite on top of the Jupiter- C would be a simple 31 pound satellite carrying the cosmic ray detector, temperature sensors, and two micrometeorite detectors, and was called Explorer. As shown above, Explorer 1 was successfully launched into orbit the night of January 31, 1958, finally putting the US into the space race. And the cosmic ray detector (under Dr. Van Allen's leadership) provided the first evidence of the existence of radiation belts circling the Earth, now well-known as the Van Allen Belts. An interesting story about the Van Allen signature: I had a cousin who was about two years older than me and she was going the University in Iowa where Dr. Van Allen was working. I didn't want to risk mailing that cover to him so I sent it to her and asked her if she could try to get him to sign it for me. She found out where he lived and went up and rang the doorbell. He let her in and they conversed for about a half hour and she just loved the opportunity. He looked at the cover and said, "Oh, this is one of the expensive kind! I hope my signature doesn't ruin it." And he took it and carefully signed it for her. She then mailed it back to me and thanked me for giving her such a great opportunity to meet with him. That told me a little about the kind of man that Dr. Van Allen was.
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