1957–1969: Opening the Space Age
Explorer 3
Confirmed the existence of the trapped radiation belts discovered by Explorer 1.
Era 1 of 6 · full record in the catalog
- Launch
- 1 Feb 1958
- Lead / partner
- United States
- Target
- Earth orbit
- Category
- Space physics
- Status
- Success
- Vehicle
- Juno I
- Mass
- unknown
- Orbit / trajectory
- Geocentric orbit
- Duration
- 120 days (planned) 111 days (achieved)
Why it happened
Explorer 3 flew during 1957–1969: Opening the Space Age, as part of United States's work toward earth orbit. A sourced write-up of the context around this mission is still on the editorial queue; nothing here is invented to fill the gap.
The mission
The full narrative of this mission is pending research and writing. What is recorded so far: Confirmed the existence of the trapped radiation belts discovered by Explorer 1.
Results
Confirmed the existence of the trapped radiation belts discovered by Explorer 1.
Related missions
Sources & image credits
- NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · license: public-domain (source, checked 2026-08-24)
- Mission record: AntarikshPedia canonical dataset (data-sources/missions_timeline.md)
- Specifications reference: NASA NSSDCA Master Catalog
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