{"id":757,"date":"2012-04-26T14:51:09","date_gmt":"2012-04-26T14:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=757"},"modified":"2012-04-26T14:51:09","modified_gmt":"2012-04-26T14:51:09","slug":"ariel-1-britains-first-satellite-plus-first-launch-kenya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/ariel-1-britains-first-satellite-plus-first-launch-kenya\/","title":{"rendered":"Ariel-1, Britain's First Satellite … plus, the First Launch from Kenya"},"content":{"rendered":"

A half-century ago today — April 26, 1962 — a Thor-Delta rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, carrying the Ariel-1 spacecraft into orbit. <\/p>\n

\"\"
\n(Ariel-1 display model. Smithsonian National Air & Space Musuem Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center<\/a> image.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nIn addition to being the United Kingdom’s first satellite, Ariel-1<\/a> was also the first international satellite: a joint project in which NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center built the satellite body and Britain supplied the scientific instruments. It carried “a tape recorder and instrumentation for one cosmic-ray, two solar emissions, and three ionospheric experiments.”<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the model on display at the National Air & Space Musuem “was rebuilt from original parts by technicians at GSFC.” That’s pretty cool.<\/p>\n

Five years later, on April 26, 1967, the Italian satellite San Marco-2<\/a> became the first spacecraft launched from the San Marco Launch Platform, which was built atop an old oil platform off the coast of Kenya. (San Marco-1 had been launched from Wallops Island, Virginia<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A half-century ago today — April 26, 1962 — a Thor-Delta rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, carrying the Ariel-1 spacecraft into orbit. (Ariel-1 display model. Smithsonian National Air & Space Musuem Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center image.) In addition to being the United Kingdom’s first satellite, Ariel-1 was also the \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":[26,11],"class_list":["post-757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space","tag-launch","tag-space-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757","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=757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}