Thursday, January 31, 2008

Explorer 1

I'm really too busy to blog this week, but I wanted to briefly note today's 50th anniversary of the launch of Explorer 1 on January 31, 1958. Developed by JPL, Explorer 1 was the United States' first successful satellite. Astroprof has a good post on Explorer 1.

The picture shows an add-on version of Explorer 1 simulated in Orbiter (you can see the first stage falling away in the smoke following stage separation). This add-on is by Jim Williams and it features a launch autopilot and some sounds, including the original launch countdown. Another Explorer 1 add-on was released yesterday but I don't know too much about that version.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Many thanks for your posts. I read them regularly. Your book „Go play in space” was very useful for my son and me.
Best regards:
Jacek Kupras
btw:
I have some maybe interesting for you. Look at this: http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/educational.php
This is not Orbiter;), but quite impressive.

FlyingSinger said...

Thanks for your comment and for mentioning "Go Play In Space" - I'm glad it was useful for you. I'm familiar with Celestia and have played with it a bit. It is also quite an amazing free program, but it's always a matter of free time, and I prefer the space flight modeling approach of Orbiter.