Throwback Thursday - Space Exploration

On this day in 1958, the United States Army launched the first U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, into Earth's orbit. Instruments aboard Explorer 1 made the first detection of the Van Allen belts, which are bands of trapped radiation surrounding Earth. This was the first major scientific discovery of the space age.

While I was reading about this, I discovered something I never knew. This satellite was tiny! I mean, not tiny like a raisen or tiny like a speck of dirt, but much smaller than I had imagined. Here is a photo of the satellite:

And here I thought satellites were big ole' monsters! Not big like a rocket, of course, but....bigger than that! Okay, so maybe I'm the only person in the world who never saw a satellite before. But I found it very interesting.

Do you know of anything else that happened on this day in history? Write about it in your blog, then leave me a comment and I will post a link to it!