Word: moonwatch
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...scientists and non-IGY scientists would, of course, be artificial for on most projects the source of the funds was merely an idle afterthought. In fact, the basic contribution to the satellite program--the on-the-spot recording of data--was made by thousands of unpaid amateurs organized into "Moonwatch" teams...
Marshall Melin, heading a moonwatch team atop to Harvard Observatory, said several persons there thought they saw the satellite but Melin did not feel they were reliable sightings...
...Sullivan's modest sphere would not be conspicuous to the naked eye, but it could be picked up easily with low-power moonwatch telescopes. Its great virtue would be its short life. Even on a comparatively high orbit, the tenuous bubble of nothing would be slowed by faint traces of air on the threshold of space. Following a circular course 300 miles above the earth, it would live for only about ten days, and its rapid changes of speed and altitude would measure air density much more accurately than the slow responses of heavier satellites...
...moonwatch team in Bryn Athens, Pennsylvania, reported at 8:45 p.m. spoting an object in the sky "trailing a tail of tiny particles." Ten minutes later word came from the Barbados Islands reporting that a fiery object had been sighted "blowing...
...assume that this was the end of the satellite," White said. There have been no more sightings from moonwatch stations across the country," and it should ordinarily have crossed the U.S. several times...