Word: orbiter
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...some figures. At zero plus in minutes, three California stations reported the pickup. Pickering said: "I want four stations. These are all Army stations, and they may be over enthusiastic." The fourth followed: a Navy tracking station checked in with the confirming news. Announced Pickering: "It's in orbit." Brucker beamed; Von Braun smiled. The Explorer was late, he concluded, because it had shot farther out into space than had been expected, thus had to travel the extra distance of its elongated elliptical orbit. "It's fine, fine," he murmured. At 12:44 Andy Goodpaster passed the word...
...turned U.S. Army missile expert. Von Braun assured the group that the Redstone missile, already developed at the Army's Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala. and successfully fired at Cape Canaveral in 1953, could be souped up to put a 5-lb. satellite into outer-space orbit...
...each other that Medaris wants the Army's next missile to be named the "Wernher." By function, Medaris is middleman between the space-at-all-costs Huntsville scientists and the cost-conscious Defense Department-and if Von Braun is mainly responsible for the blueprints that sent Explorer into orbit, Medaris deserves credit for wangling the wherewithal. Says John Medaris of past threats against Huntsville's continued existence: "It was all incredible to me." Medaris, Von Braun, and all their subordinates refused to believe the incredible-and put the U.S. into space...
From Moscow, generous congratulations from Russian scientists came in by phone and cable. Explorer also produced some interesting if unexpected results from the Russians: within four hours after Explorer was in orbit, Moscow telegraphed the International Geophysical Year headquarters in Brussels that data on its own satellites, carefully guarded for the past four months, would be airmailed immediately for all to read...
...triumphantly overhead. Fifteen minutes later it was radio-tracked over Ghana on the west coast of Africa. Around the earth it swept, but not until it passed homebound over California-nearly two hours after it left the ground-were the scientists sure that their bird was in a stable orbit...