{"id":460,"date":"2010-06-22T22:46:46","date_gmt":"2010-06-22T22:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=460"},"modified":"2010-06-22T22:46:46","modified_gmt":"2010-06-22T22:46:46","slug":"two-payloads-two-orbits-two-space-firsts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/two-payloads-two-orbits-two-space-firsts\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Payloads, Two Orbits, Two Space Firsts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifty years ago today — June 22, 1960 — a Thor rocket launched from Cape Canaveral and, for the first time ever, put two payloads into two different orbits. This launch set the standard for many multiple-launch missions to come. The rocket carried a Transit-2A navigation satellite and the Solrad-1 solar observation satellite.<\/p>\n

Transit-2A<\/a> was the newest in a series of navigation satellites put into orbit by the U.S. Navy. The Transit system proved that satellite navigation was possible, and set the stage for today’s Global Positioning System.<\/p>\n

Solrad-1<\/a> was the other “first” scored by this launch.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(GRAB (Solrad-1) satellite model on display at the National Cryptologic Museum. Naval Research Laboratory image from Wikimedia Commons.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nSolrad-1 was also known as GRAB, the Galactic Radiation and Background satellite. Built by the Naval Research Laboratory, GRAB was the nation’s first reconnaissance satellite. As noted on this page<\/a>, GRAB collected electronics intelligence on Soviet radar systems.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifty years ago today — June 22, 1960 — a Thor rocket launched from Cape Canaveral and, for the first time ever, put two payloads into two different orbits. This launch set the standard for many multiple-launch missions to come. The rocket carried a Transit-2A navigation satellite and the Solrad-1 \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[26,74,11],"class_list":["post-460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","tag-launch","tag-satellite","tag-space-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}