Science | March 18th, 2008

The Vanguard 1 satellite has been in orbit now for 50 years as of Monday. It was powered by solar panels and continued to operate just fine from 1958 until 1964 when it’s dinky little transmitter finally pooped out.
However, the little guys has remained in a fairly stable orbit for half a century now, racking up 197,000 orbits around Earth totaling 10 billion km (or 6 billion mi).
That’s not even the cool part. The really cool part is that there’s talk of bringing this pig home and putting it into a museum!
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