Satellite turns 50 years old ... in orbit!

Oldest artificial object still in space

By James Oberg
NBC News space analyst
updated 2:07 p.m. CT, Mon., March. 17, 2008

HOUSTON - The oldest surviving artificial Earth satellite, Vanguard 1, turned 50 years old on Monday — and continued to turn in its orbit, just as it has done since its launch at the dawn of the Space Age. The craft is in a high orbit that promises to be stable for centuries. Circling there, it has outlived almost all of the human beings who created it.

The satellite already has completed more than 197,000 Earth orbits, racking up more than 6 billion miles (10 billion kilometers) of travel. Only the Pioneer and Voyager probes, currently speeding away on the edge of the solar system, have gone farther.

Vanguard 1's current orbit ranges from 400 to 2,400 miles (653 to 3,839 kilometers) in altitude, and the high point has dropped only about 60 miles (100 kilometers) in the past half-century. It reliably records one additional orbit every 133 minutes. But the craft's orbital stability is guaranteed only as long as there's no outside interference. And now there's a chance that America's longest-lived spacefarer could have another round of "space pioneering" ahead of it.

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The article is fairly lengthy, but well worth clicking over to read for any who remember - or think they do - the "good old days" of early space flight.

Recovery of the satellite to exhibit in a museum is speculatively proposed. Maybe there should be a vote(?).

John