[plucky suspenseful music] >> Narrator: Nestled against the San Gabriel mountains near Pasadena, California is a gateway to the solar system and beyond, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

A NASA facility, it has been managed since the time of its creation by the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech.

When visitors first enter the laboratory's museum, they are greeted by an image of three space pioneers from a half century ago, captured in a moment of celebration.

Explorer was forged in the cauldron of the Cold War, at a time when JPL was building, not spacecraft, but missiles that carried atomic weapons.

This is the story of how JPL entirely changed direction and purpose.

[plucky suspenseful music] This is also the story of a satellite that would give the world the very first space science discovery, one that would change our understanding of how life on earth came to be.

Explorer 1, Beginnings of the Space Age White Sands [soothing music] White Sands, New Mexico This is where JPL conducted test launches of its Cold War missiles.

Close by is the Trinity site, where the United States detonated the first atomic bomb that brought World War II to a close.

The lab's origins dated back to 1936, when a group of Caltech students and enthusiasts began conducting modest rocket engine tests.

[engine rumbles] Those hand to mouth efforts would have likely died, had not the U.S. Army seen uses for the rocket.

By 1945, JPL's work was at the forefront of American knowledge of rocketry with this missile, the WAC corporal.

[soft music] [rocket whooshing] Though many Caltech professors wanted to abandon classified military work at the war's end, the arrival of the Cold War only intensified the pressure to tap the institute's expertise in rocketry.

>> Robert McDougal: In a certain respect, World War II has never ended.

Modern weaponry and arms racing pose a great challenge to the very values that we Americans were defending.

How long could it remain a free society if it had to become a garrison state, an arsenal?

>> Narrator: JPL's WAC Corporal was only an experimental rocket, but in the fall of 1945, a new group arrived at White Sands with rocket combat experience: some 120 German engineers, who had built Hitler's V2.

[dark music] [rocket whooshing] Over 3,500 of these missiles, each armed with a ton of high explosives, were launched against European allied cities in the last year of the war.

[somber music] But as Germany collapsed, the leader of the V2 team, Wernher von Braun, led members of his group away from their rocket facility to avoid capture by the Russian Army.

During the escape, von Braun was injured in a car wreck, but he succeeded in his plan of surrendering to the Americans.

The capture of von Braun, many of his engineers and a stockpile of V2s were among the greatest spoils of the war.

>> Roger Launius: Wernher von Braun, there's a dark side to his background in Nazi Germany.

Building a rocket is one thing, building it for an evil regime using concentration camp labor that is worked to death, beaten to death if they step out of line and thousands of people died in the process of building V2s.

In the 1960s, Tom Lehrer, the satirist, wrote a song about Wernher von Braun and one of the phrases from that was, "the rockets go up and where they come down, "that's not my department, said Wernher von Braun."

In other words, he wasn't concerned about what you do with these things or with the process you go to to build them.

He just wants to build his rockets.

[ominous music] >> Narrator: The Army wanted to learn all it could about von Braun's V2.

Over 60 of them would be launched from White Sands.

>> Launius: There was at first, a sense, you know, okay, we'll bring him over for a short period of time.

We'll learn what we can from this group and then we'll send them back home.

And that didn't happen.

>> Narrator: Von Braun quickly Americanized himself.

Charming and a born marketeer, he would become the most recognizable advocate in America for space exploration.

He spun visions of a new generation of missiles and put forth grander ambitions: earth orbiting satellites, excursions to the Moon and Mars and a battle station capable of reigning nuclear devastation from orbit, thereby establishing once and for all, military superiority.

In their first encounters at White Sands, the German and JPL groups found themselves side-by-side, sharing the same launch pad and hangar.

There was no doubt who had the larger missile.

The tail end of this V2 dwarfs a nearby JPL rocket.

The JPL team though, was not particularly impressed.

They were ahead of the Germans, they believed, in guidance and control and feelings about the war were still raw.

>> Clayton Koppes: The war was just over.

There's a lot of suspicion about what von Braun, his team represented.

There undoubtedly, was a certain amount of rivalry, as well.

And in fact, Louis Dunn, who became director of JPL in 1946, actually refused to allow von Braun onto the laboratory grounds at one point, until the colonel, who was the liaison person at JPL, basically said, "Yeah, they're part of the Army, too and you should let them on."

So, I think there was certainly a lingering tension.

>> Narrator: It took two years, but in 1947, the Army had the JPL and German teams working together.

[dramatic music] A 15 ton V2 was mated with JPL's smaller WAC Corporal, which served as the upper stage.

This combined multi-stage rocket was nicknamed the Bumper WAC.

On the 5th launch attempt in February of 1949, JPL's upper stage soared to a height of nearly 250 miles.

Though it did not go into orbit, the JPL rocket became the first object to reach, beyond dispute, the boundary of extraterrestrial space.

A year later, a Bumper WAC was also the first rocket ever to be launched from a mosquito-infested swamp in Florida, bearing a name few knew how to pronounce and even fewer had ever heard of: Cape Canaveral.

The sense of accomplishment though, had already been overshadowed by the knowledge that the Soviet Union had detonated its first atomic bomb in 1949, years ahead of expectations.

America's atomic monopoly was over and the world was about to plunge deeper into the Cold War.

[soothing music] The Corporal One Cold War dilemma facing the United States was how defend Western Europe against a Soviet invasion without deploying a permanent full-scale Army, a prospect that would damage the American economy.

The solution was the strategy of deterrence.

A Soviet attack would be countered with nuclear weapons.

With tensions mounting, the Army pressed JPL to transform its research on a test missile, into an operational weapons system to be deployed in Europe.

Called the Corporal, this short range missile was to be used near the front lines.

Specifications called for hitting a target with relative precision at a range of 75 miles.

In charge of building the Corporal was a Caltech professor destined to become JPL's next director, the New Zealand-born William Pickering.

The taciturn Pickering lacked the flash of a Wernher von Braun, but he was just as tenacious and as ambitious.

>> [William Pickering] When the Army came to the lab and said that look, now the Germans have this V2, we want you guys to do some research on trying to understand the longer range ballistic missiles-- long range in those days, being a hundred miles, like a V2.

The Corporal rocket was a radio-controlled, radio-guided rocket.

It perform reasonably well.

Although, the fact that it was a rehash of a research device, meant that it was never really a very good production rocket.

[rocket whooshing] >> Narrator: Pickering had once half-joked, that JPL could do anything, but building the Corporal proved a humbling assignment.

While the first test went well, the next few were disastrous.

>> John Casani: No, we had some that went south.

The term "went south" means when fired him from the launch area in White Sands, the firing range was north.

And south, the firing range was Mexico and Juarez and what have you.

So, it was not good to go, but we had some that actually, instead of going up this way, they went the wrong way.

They went south.

[upbeat music] >> Narrator: As a way of acknowledging the rocket setbacks, JPL produced for the Army, a self satirizing film called, "The Corporal Story."

[upbeat music] [rocket whooshing] [upbeat music] [rocket whooshing] [upbeat music] [rocket whooshing] [upbeat music] [rocket whooshing] The Army brass laughed at the film, but they continued to press to have the Corporal deployed.

[ominous music] Matters weren't helped by a list of growing requirements.

Better accuracy was demanded under all kinds of weather conditions.

Though originally envisioned as carrying an atomic warhead, the option of biological or chemical payloads was also tested.

[somber music] The complications of launching a Corporal from White Sands paled in comparison with a launch attempt in the field.

The toxic nature of the fuel made for hazardous conditions for the missile crew, even in a non-combat environment.

The training of crews revealed that getting into firing position required as much as four hours of preparation, to say nothing of an entourage of trucks, equipment, and personnel that on an open road, often stretched for more than a dozen miles.

[somber music] Once designed, the production line was turned over to industrial contractors.

More than a thousand Corporals would be built.

With a reliability rating of only 60% the Corporal rushed into the field in 1955.

Though marginal as a weapon system, the presence of the rocket was hoped to be a psychological deterrent, as the nuclear warhead the Corporal carried was three times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Kicking Back [lively music] By the mid 1950s, JPL had tripled in size.

The work was serious and intense, but JPLers played just as hard.

Think of a sport, any sport, and more than likely JPL had a team.

There were baseball teams, basketball teams, bowling teams, archery clubs, chess clubs, golf clubs, gun clubs, motor sports clubs, and even a UFO and a woodshoppers club.

[lively music] When they weren't competing for fun in the daylight hours, they might be found socializing and dancing the night away at the Elks club.

There were summer dances, fall harvest dances, masquerade dances, winter dances, and the Spring Coronation Ball, where every year the laboratory director crowned the new Miss Guided Missile.

The director by now was William Pickering, who reveled in this coronation duty.

This beauty pageant contest was an eagerly awaited social event.

Each year, competing groups at the lab mounted to elaborate campaigns, to have their candidate bestowed with the title of Miss Guided Missile.

It was all a way to blow off steam, for back at work awaited their jobs, which one way or another, male or female, was about the serious business of building missiles for the Cold War.

The Sergeant [lively Music] ♪ Guided missiles ♪ ♪ Guided missiles ♪ ♪ Guided missiles aimed at my heart ♪ ♪ Bound to destroy me ♪ ♪ Tear me apart ♪ What the Army wanted next was a faster, less complicated and more accurate missile.

The answer was to go back to the solid fuels JPL had pioneered in the 40's to propel planes into the sky.

♪ Guided missiles ♪ ♪ Bound to explode ♪ ♪ Destroying my heart ♪ ♪ Is your goal ♪ >> Robert Parks: The purpose of Sergeant firings number 11 and 12 will be to test fire the first two fully guided experimental model Sergeants to an assigned target.

Two identical-- >> Parks: The Sergeant was a second generation to do about the same job, but to take advantage of all we'd learned and to know, from the very beginning, we started to design it for field use in a military situation.

♪ I won't give in ♪ >> Narrator: But relations with the Army were beginning to fray, especially when JPL cautioned that as many as 50 test rounds of the Sergeant might be needed before arriving at a deployable system.

♪ You in the end ♪ [rocket booms] >> Pickering: It was pretty obvious that the lab was probably coming to an end with its work for the Army.

The lab, as a part of Caltech, was feeling that the work we were doing, was not really very appropriate.

>> Narrator: Pickering and others were envisioning a new future for the laboratory.

If they had their way, the Sergeant would be the last missile JPL would ever build.

♪ But to say guided missiles ♪ ♪ Will get you in the end ♪ Bootleg [ominous music] All of the us military branches saw uses for rockets tipped with nuclear warheads, but President Eisenhower was intrigued by another use for missiles.

[rocket whooshing] >> Reconnaissance satellites, spy satellites, spies in the sky.

[dramatic music] >> Narrator: Nikita Khrushchev had rejected Eisenhower's open skies proposal to use airplanes for mutual reconnaissance.

How hostile, Eisenhower worried, would the Soviet Union be to a satellite flying overhead?

>> McDougall: The great question hanging over the inauguration of the space age was, is it legal to orbit satellites over the territory of other countries?

Is outer space subject to the same airspace laws that airplanes have to obey?

It's not legal to fly U2 airplanes over the Soviet Union if the Soviet Union doesn't permit it.

Their airspace is an extension of their national sovereignty, extending upward.

"usque ad Caelum" in the Latin phrase, even unto the heavens.

>> Narrator: In 1955, a potential solution to the problem appeared.

Physicist James van Allen was helping spearhead an effort to launch a satellite to study the Earth as part of a worldwide science effort called the International Geophysical Year or IGY.

Eisenhower immediately seized on the opportunity.

>> Launius: One of the things that Eisenhower was interested in pursuing was making sure that the first satellites into orbit were not viewed as military satellites, not viewed as national security assets.

So, a scientific satellite was perfect for that.

>> Narrator: Shortly after Eisenhower's pronouncement, the Soviets announced they would also launch a satellite.

A competition was now underway, not only with the Soviet Union, but within the Pentagon.

All three military services competed to launch America's first satellite.

The most serious contenders seemed to be the Army's proposal, which once again, lashed together the rockets of JPL and the German V2 group.

By now Von Braun and his team were Alabamans.

After all their V2s were fired off at White Sands, they were reassigned to Huntsville and were now under the command of General John Bruce Medaris.

During World War II, Medaris came close to being a casualty of one von Braun's V2s.

Now, the former German adversary was working for him.

Yet the stigma associated with the Nazi V2 was likely one of the reasons why the Army's proposal to launch the first satellite was rejected in favor of the Navy's Vanguard project, a rocket designed strictly for scientific purposes.

>> Henry Richter: One significant difference between Vanguard and us was they had no military hardware involved in it.

It was all nice, civilian-type, which is one reason it didn't work as well.

They didn't have the experience.

[dramatic orchestral Music] Earth Satellite Ready to Seek Out Secrets of Space [Man] First of three Earth satellites to be launched by the U.S. during the International Geophysical Year just starting, is about ready for its adventure into outer space.

>> Narrator: The Army was both shocked and furious with the selection of Vanguard and demanded a review of the decision.

>> This caused great consternation in Huntsville at the Redstone Arsenal where General Bruce Medaris and Dr. von Braun had the hardware on hand to launch a satellite next week, if they were just given the go-ahead to do so, but they were told no, you're absolutely forbidden to launch a satellite.

The Vanguard program is going to be our contribution to the IGY.

[dramatic music] >> Narrator: The Army consoled itself with work on a new generation of the V2, a rocket that became known as the Jupiter C. [ominous music] [rocket whooshing] This missile, carrying a nuclear payload, was to have a range of 1500 miles.

To reach such distances, the missile's flight path required boosting the warhead out of the atmosphere at the height of its trajectory.

Surviving re-entry, while accurately hitting the intended target, was a new technological challenge.

And for a third time, the German and JPL teams found themselves working together.

As with the Bumper WAC, JPL would provide the upper stage, a boost theoretically strong enough to send a satellite into orbit.

>> Pickering: And we indeed, did quite a number of...several tests with von Braun's people in lobbing a reentry test vehicle about 3,000 miles out into the Atlantic.

We realized that all we had to do was add another stage and we could've put that into orbit.

The Russian were hard at it.

We thought the Russians were well ahead of the Vanguard program and if only we were given the go ahead, we could do it.

>> Koppes: There was a deep suspicion on the part of some people in the Eisenhower administration that von Braun and General Medaris, the commander at Huntsville, were a bit out of control, that they might simply go ahead and launch a set, launch a satellite on their own.

>> Narrator: To keep that from occurring, the White House ordered the Army to fill the final stage with sand instead of fuel when the rocket was first tested in September 1956.

Still, the Army did not give up hope.

Spare rockets were placed in controlled storage, ready to be rolled out at a moment's notice.

>> General Medaris even risked a court martial by putting some of his people toward spending money on preparing a Jupiter C, in hopes that the word would come down sooner or later from Washington.

>> Narrator: By now, the Army's proposal had the support of the physicist responsible for the science payload to be launched.

James van Allen's review of the Vanguard revealed serious development problems.

To hedge his bets, he designed his payload to fit on either Vanguard or Jupiter.

Bill Pickering at JPL played his cards differently.

Though JPL was part of the Army proposal, he also chaired the science committee charged with satellite tracking.

One way or another, JPL would be a player when a U.S. satellite went up.

But for good measure, JPL engineers had on standby, an unauthorized, but preexisting satellite casing, just in case.

>> Oh, we knew we were bootlegging it.

Very definitely, but we had being a research organization, we had carte blanche to do anything we wanted to do.

We went ahead and built one and had it ready to go.

>> Narrator: We bootlegged the whole job, another JPLer later confessed.

We locked up the satellite in a cabinet so it wouldn't be found.

[somber music] A New Moon [soothing music] [rocket launching] >> It's one of those dates when the world changed and it's a date that, where people remember where they were.

Certainly, I'm sure Bill Pickering always remembered where he was that night.

He was at the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., of all the coincidences.

A New York Times reporter bustled into the room and said that the Soviets had just launched a satellite.

There were cheers, there were congratulations, rounds of vodka, of course, as the Soviet success was toasted.

>> There's a lot of discussion about it and eventually, they end up on the roof of the Soviet embassy, looking to see if they can see anything.

>> Paul Dickson: The NBC camera guy came, I think it was at nine o'clock, and he said, "Listen now for the sound "that will ever, more separate the old from the new."

[beeping] Now, that's the beginning of the Space Age.

Mankind is now in a new era and all that stuff that weekend was just this absolute sense of awe.

[lively orchestral Music] New Moon: Reds Launch First Space Satellite >> Ed Herlihy: Today, a new moon is in the sky, a 23 inch metal sphere, placed in orbit by a Russian rocket.

500 miles up, the artificial moon is boosted to a speed counterbalancing the pull of gravity and released.

You are hearing the actual signals transmitted by the earth-circling satellite, one of the great scientific feats of the age.

[beeping] >> Casani: That sort of shook us all, pretty much.

I mean, I can remember going out in the parking lot in back of one of the buildings over here in the early evening and we could see the doggone thing flying overhead and that was really quite a, quite an experience to know that those, you know, the Russians had done it and we hadn't.

[man speaking Russian] [sweeping orchestral music] >> Pickering: We were very disappointed when the first one launched because we know darn well that the Vanguard was in trouble and we knew darn well that we could launch a satellite any time we were told to.

>> And then the political reaction began.

[sweeping orchestral Music] Ike Denies U.S. Lag in Missiles >> Herlihy: President Eisenhower reassures the nation that Russia's success with the first satellite does not indicate a serious lag in American rocket research.

>> Eisenhower: Vanguard, for the reasons indicated, has not had equal priority with that accorded our ballistic missile work.

>> Eisenhower was very calm about this and in some level, he was working with information that he could not share with others.

In the latter part of October, and especially in the first part of November, after Sputnik 2, everybody's afraid.

They're running around with their hair on fire.

♪ Sputniks and muttniks ♪ flying through the air ♪ ♪ Sputniks and muttniks ♪ flying everywhere ♪ ♪ They're so ironic.

Are they atomic?

♪ ♪ Those funny missiles ♪ have got me scared ♪ >> Narrator: Eisenhower's call for calm was swept away when the Soviets struck again.

This time, by launching Sputnik 2, an 1100 pound satellite, carrying the first living creature to reach orbit.

♪ The strangest looking objects ♪ ♪ I ever saw from space ♪ ♪ With a dog inside that ♪ got to ride into the USA ♪ ♪ To see our hound dog ♪ or American ground hog ♪ ♪ That Russian canine ♪ can't stand the pain ♪ ♪ Sputniks and muttniks ♪ flying through the air ♪ ♪ Sputniks and muttniks ♪ flying everywhere ♪ ♪ They're so ironic.

Are they atomic?

♪ ♪ Those funny missiles ♪ have got me scared ♪ >> Narrator: Two days after the launch of Sputnik 2, in November, 1957, the New York Times reported that scientists around the world were worried that the Soviets might be readying to explode a hydrogen bomb on the Moon, a firework display to mark the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

As strange as the idea sounds, Pickering's JPL team was thinking along the same lines at the same time.

>> After Sputnik, there was a sense that the United States needed to do something dramatic in response and so a number of schemes were floated.

One of those, which probably seems the most bizarre in retrospect, was Project Red Socks, which would have involved sending a missile to the Moon with a atomic bomb, which could have been exploded there.

It certainly would have been dramatic.

It would have created a lot of attention.

It probably would have also created an international firestorm of reaction, completely inconsistent with the idea that the Eisenhower administration had advanced of a peaceful approach to space exploration.

>> Narrator: Eisenhower's reaction to the Red Socks scheme was to declare, "We have no enemies on the Moon."

Meanwhile, his ratings in the polls plunged 22 points.

>> Eisenhower: I consider our country's satellite program to be well-designed and properly scheduled, to achieve the scientific purposes for which it was initiated.

We are therefore, carrying the program forward, in keeping with our arrangements with the international scientific community.

>> Eisenhower finally came to understand that the only way to tranquilize the nation was to give the American people a satellite.

>> Narrator: Under enormous pressure, the White House decided that a planned test flight of the Vanguard rocket, with its small science payload, was to be transformed into the American response to Sputnik.

>> Man: America's first attempt to launch a satellite, a six and a half inch sphere weighing just over three pounds, was checked out by scientists and declared ready.

A great wave of advance publicity focused attention at Cape Canaveral, Florida, for the launching of test vehicle three of project Vanguard.

A preliminary to their scheduled launching of a 21 pound satellite in March.

What happened is already unhappy history.

Another setback for the United States in the race into outer space.

Here are official defense department films of the launching of the 72 foot missile, a loss of thrust and fall back to Earth in split seconds.

[lively orchestral music] [missile whooshing] The exact cause is classified.

"Neither the satellite program nor our missile development "is affected," said acting Defense Secretary Quarrels.

"It's only an incident in the perfection "of the Vanguard satellite system."

>> Dickson: The whole world goes nuts.

You know, "Flopnik" and you know, "Excusenik" and there's just all these mocking headlines.

And the next morning, and the New York Stock Exchange closes, there's such fear that it says we have just had this colossal explosion.

We brought every reporter and there's this huge, huge failure and it's just and it's all on, it's the first big thing on television.

There's screams, oh my God it's exploding.

[somber music] And the next day the Russians go to the United Nations to offer us technological aid as a backward country.

They actually offered to help us out and they loved that.

They loved tweaking us at that point.

>> To have the communists lead in technology, to pioneer a new frontier of infinite size, in a sense, to capture the future, the symbolism was horrifying.

What did this mean?

That the future belongs to communism?

That if we Americans are going to leapfrog the Soviets and get back on top, we're going to have to become more like them?

>> Narrator: With Vanguard in shambles, Eisenhower relented.

Medaris, von Braun and Pickering were finally given what they wanted, their chance to reach orbit.

[lively music] The Go Ahead The importance placed on finally being given an official go-ahead to launch a satellite can be found in films made about Explorer.

>> Man: The Big Picture, an official television report of the United States Army produced for the armed forces and the American people.

>> Narrator: Among the moments memorialized in reenactment was word to proceed with a launch attempt.

>> Man: A sudden meeting husband called by general John B. Medaris, commanding general of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency.

>> Medaris: Good morning, gentlemen, be seated, please.

I have a very important announcement for you.

We've been assigned the mission of launching a scientific Earth satellite, and we will use the Jupiter C configuration as a carrier that we developed along with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

>> When you talk about this recreation of the decision point to move forward with Explorer, it's that they are very clearly given formal orders to accomplish the task.

They'd been wanting to do it all along and had been stopped at every turn and so here they have, and it's very important to them, an order to go do it.

[lively orchestral music] >> Narrator: Not to be out done, JPL created its own version of the launch go ahead.

This one in color.

[lively orchestral music] >> The Secretary of Defense announced this morning that the Army is to participate in the International Geophysical Year satellite program.

>> Narrator: Both films stressed the deadline of 90 days, but no mention was made of the unauthorized preparations that had already taken place and so was born the legend that the response to Sputnik had taken less than 90 days, from start to launch.

>> The Army is requesting the jet propulsion-- >> Sedaris: I promised the Secretary of the Army that we would be ready in 90 days or less.

Let's go, Wernher.

>> Man: This is what they've been waiting for.

The deadline is 90 days, 90 days to put a satellite into orbit, a crash program, an emergency, put a satellite into orbit within 90 days.

>> Narrator: Von Braun and Medaris pulled their Jupiter C out of storage.

JPL was ready with the upper stages, a cluster arrangement of miniaturized Sergeant missiles.

JPL was also responsible for communications, transmitting data from the satellite and capturing it on the ground.

>> Richter: Both transmitters operate continuously throughout the orbit, and each will carry four simultaneous channels of telemetering.

>> Narrator: Besides telemetry, Henry Richter had another assignment, installing the science payload onto the satellite.

The primary instrument, a cosmic ray detector, belonged to James van Allen of the University of Iowa.

JPL needed his permission to load the instrument on board, but he was nowhere to be found.

>> Van Allen was unavailable at that time to get permission.

He was on an icebreaker down on the South Pacific, launching balloons and Dr. Pickering tried for a day, through Navy communication channels, to get in touch with him, without luck, till he went to Western Union and got a telegram back in three hours.

So, tells you something about military communications.

>> Narrator: In the midst of this scramble, another problem cropped up.

Unbeknownst to JPL, von Braun was working on his own satellite.

>> General Medaris, the commander of the program, is sort of betwixt in between.

He has two powerful, brilliant scientists, or at least one scientist, one engineer, Von Braun and Pickering at loggerheads and in a dramatic gesture, which illustrated beautifully Medaris's leadership qualities, he took Pickering aside and quietly talked to him while von Braun cooled his heels and had to wait and they had a conversation.

The Army general and the Caltech scientist, and then returned.

Whereupon General Medaris informed informed Dr. von Braun that Dr. Pickering and JPL would be providing the satellite.

Von Braun was not pleased, but he knew how to take orders.

And the result of that decision by Medaris was that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory got in to the spacecraft business.

>> Narrator: When Medaris said yes to Pickering, he set in motion the future for JPL.

It was the direction Pickering had envisioned for some time, turning away from weapons systems to building spacecraft that would explore the heavens.

[moving instrumental music] Reaching Orbit >> Man: Minutes click past relentlessly.

The beams of powerful search lights light up the missile, truly the star of one of the greatest suspense dramas of our time.

The drama approaches the final act, the Army's first attempt to fire a man-made moon into orbit.

Time, late evening, Friday, January 31st, 1958, in a block house at Canaveral.

The countdown to Explorer 1.

>> Man On Intercom: Okay, we'll start now.

>> Any fuel loading?

>> Narrator: Given the debacle of Vanguard, Washington was intensely involved in how this new launch attempt would be portrayed.

>> Fuel vapors and notify the block house.

>> Narrator: Medaris believed the White House was intentionally deemphasizing the Army's role in its dictation of every aspect of the publicity plan.

The general was to be at the Cape to oversee the launch.

Pickering, Van Allen and von Braun were assigned to the Pentagon.

If the satellite reached orbit, the three men in Washington would announce the news at the National Academy of Sciences, in keeping with Eisenhower's desire to portray America's satellite as civilian in nature as possible.

[keys clattering] [radio chattering] [clattering] >> Man On Radio: Roger go 15 seconds.

10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

My command, my command!

[roaring] [sweeping orchestral music] >> So we got a report from the Cape that the launch looks pretty good, and it should fly over California such and such a time.

And so the decision was made that we would make no public announcements about the rocket until it had actually been picked up in California.

And so we sat there for an hour and a half.

The time came and went, and there was a period of eight minutes there, which were the longest eight minutes I ever spent in my life.

>> What happened was that the jet stream had boosted it into a higher orbit than that had been predicted.

And so it took a little longer to begin to get the signal and so everyone is extremely tense during this time, because now the Vanguard program has had its failures, JPL and Huntsville are now carrying the flag, so to speak and it's not clear, it's not clear for sure, if this is going to work or not.

>> Narrator: More agonizing minutes went by, but finally JPL received the signal that the satellite was in orbit.

The United States had a success, but not an official name for the satellite.

The card playing JPL-ers, had unofficially called the project "Deal".

"High Ball" was Medaris's choice.

The Pentagon rejected the gambling and liquor allusions in favor of a more lofty concept, "Explorer".

Eisenhower, on a golfing trip at the time, was awakened from his sleep and told the news.

"Let's not make too big of a hullabaloo over this," he cautioned and went back to sleep.

No one took the president's advice.

>> We were told that there was going to be a press conference over at the National Academy of Sciences on the other side of the river.

So, off we went.

And I remember sitting in that car with the three of us in the backseat.

It was sort of a cold, rainy January night in Washington and I remember the conversation going along, wonder whether anybody's going to be out here, because it's now about two o'clock in the morning, you see.

[sweet orchestral music] >> Man: In Washington at the National Academy of Science, a packed auditorium of reporters radio in... >> Von Braun and Allen and Pickering are there to lift the satellite aloft.

It is interesting that the Army isn't there in that picture.

And that's an indicator in a sense, of what's to come.

>> Man: The question is, has any form of life been placed in the satellite?

>> I think I could answer that one almost myself.

>> Man: Not intentionally.

>> Maybe we have a Florida cockroach inside, we don't know.

[laughing] >> The Explorer launch brings us back to a measure of parity with the Soviets.

It's not complete, but at least we have now demonstrated that we can put something into orbit as well.

The success of Explorer, and what we learned from it, really does kind of recreate in the most fundamental way the nature of the Jet Propulsion Lab and moving it from a rocket development center to one in which space science becomes what it really does.

It really put JPL on the map scientifically.

[serious music] Epilogue >> Narrator: The day following the launch of Explorer, newspaper headlines across the country gave testimony to a relieved and grateful nation.

[serious music] Back in Pasadena, there was a modest celebration in the laboratory's cafeteria.

Later, vice-president Nixon would pay a visit to the lab for a photo op with the satellite.

[slow instrumental music] In a way, Explorer 1 was beginner's luck for JPL.

Explorer 2 fell short of reaching orbit when the JPL-supplied fourth stage failed to ignite.

[slow instrumental music] Explorers 3 and 4 were successful.

But as if to give warning to how difficult exploring the new frontier of space would be, the 5th and final Explorer also failed to reach orbit.

But the three successful Explorers would give the world the first space science discovery, the presence of highly charged particles that surround the Earth.

>> I mean, it tells us so much about the Earth and why the Earth is the way it is, the fact that there's life here, for that matter, because of this, of these belts, we are able to survive.

It has dominated the way in which we pursued our science since that time.

There is I think, no way to underestimate the value and significance of that discovery.

>> Narrator: These belts were named after their discoverer, James van Allen.

In contrast, Vanguard never recovered from its setback on the national stage.

But on its third attempt, Vanguard placed America's second satellite into orbit.

Unlike Sputnik or Explorer 1, Vanguard still circles the Earth to this day.

It is the oldest human made object in space.

[slow instrumental music] It would take years for the nation to appreciate Eisenhower's calm leadership in the opening of the Space Age.

Though he suffered politically for the United States being second, Sputnik established what Eisenhower wanted most, the right to orbit above any territory on the globe.

The reconnaissance satellites that would later fly helped to contain Cold War tensions.

Another Eisenhower legacy was to establish, just months after the launch of Explorer, a civilian space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA.

The Army lost to this new agency von Braun's team and JPL.

Wounded, but still proud, the Army held a glittering affair in Washington on the first anniversary of the launch of Explorer 1.

[orchestral music] There were speeches, standing ovations and toasts.

But beneath the surface, there was unhappiness.

The loss of JPL and von Braun's team was a bitter blow for Medaris's ambitions for the Army.

He retired and became an Episcopalian priest.

[slow orchestral music] Von Braun was equally distraught.

He had first declared that he wanted nothing to do with the new space agency.

He changed his mind when he recognized the opportunity to build the rocket that would take astronauts to the Moon.

Pickering's reaction was different.

For the first time, JPL was in the national spotlight and Pickering got what he wanted most, the chance to explore the solar system.

It was the dream that had inspired JPL from its very beginnings.

Under Pickering's leadership, JPL would first help take America to the Moon, then open the pathway to the planets and beyond.

>> There were detours.

The military applications with missiles and the like, that took JPL in a different course for awhile.

But with Explorer 1, JPL was actually headed in that direction, as some of its earliest enthusiasts had imagined.

And so, by the late 50s, now with Explorer 1 and subsequent projects, you can see JPL finally reaching for the very things that had excited some of the very earliest proponents of rocketry.

[subtle orchestral music] [lively music] ♪ Satellite baby come ♪ on back down to earth ♪ ♪ Satellite baby come ♪ on back down to earth ♪ ♪ Radioactive daddy's found ♪ out what you are worth ♪ ♪ Nuclear baby you don't ♪ fission out on me ♪ ♪ Nuclear baby you don't ♪ fission out on me ♪ ♪ Geiger Counter daddy ♪ loves your atomic energy ♪ ♪ Yes we're gonna rock it rock it ♪ ♪ Rock it around that Moon tonight ♪ ♪ Rock it to our heart's delight ♪ ♪ Rock it little baby by ♪ the bright moonlight ♪ ♪ Until the earth is out of sight ♪ ♪ We're gonna rock it ♪ daddy take your satellite ♪