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Talk:Vanguard 1

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This satellite is NOT space "junk." Because it is still in a relatively stable orbit, it can be tracked and the measurements continue to provide valuable information on atmospheric density and the geodesy of the Earth.Vanguard50th (talk) 15:24, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This article should be merged into Project Vanguard. --Alexwcovington 08:36, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Orbits now ~204,400 as of June 15, 2006

This is a near cut & paste of the Nasa page --Codejnki 14:04, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder who's collection this satellite will end up in. With an expected orbit of 240 years, you just know that it's going to be salvaged before it burns up. Being the third man-made object to be launched into space would have a great deal of historical value to quite a few people. 24.65.90.29 05:31, 17 March 2007 (UTC)headkase[reply]

Is this satellite going to come down sooner or later? This website says the exact opposite of what's on the page, that Vanguard's orbit is going to last a couple of thousand years rather than a couple of hundred. [1]--UrsusArctosL71 (talk) 02:15, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This thing is around 5 feet across but only weighs about 3 pounds? I realize that aluminum is light, but is this correct? -Grammaticus Repairo 06:20, 17 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Are you sure about that Grammaticus? The article states the sphere is 152mm in diameter - that's six inches. --Bradg 07:31, 17 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bradg is correct. It's about the size of a grapefruit. --William Ackerman 15:27, 17 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking 152cm...my bad! -Grammaticus Repairo 18:27, 17 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have corrected the dimensions to describe the sphere as 152 mm / 6 inches diameter with antenna spanning 3 feet. 2601:185:8280:2240:31A8:261D:61A:340E (talk) 20:07, 12 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Can this grapefruit-sized object really be tracked optically from earth, even with a powerful telescope? -Grammaticus Repairo 02:43, 19 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. The U.S. built a network of Baker-Nunn cameras for this purpose. Here's a ref. [2] --agr 03:15, 19 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is the 108 MHz figure for the transmitter frequency correct? This seems unlikely, since that puts it inside the aviation navigation (VOR/ILS) band. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:46, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know the exact frequency, but oral history in my family says that the crystals for the radio on the Vanguard satellites were ground by hand by James R. Eager (10 Dec 1909 - 8 Dec 1962). Further oral history states he was the last man alive to be able to grind such crystals to frequency by hand, without reference to the masters in washington, DC. Mycroft (talk) 17:02, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

108 MHz is correct. I added a ref. It's also at the top of the FM band and I remember trying to receive Vanguard's signals on an FM tuner without success.--agr (talk) 01:41, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have set up this article to have its orbital elements automatically updated by User:AstRoBot, an approved bot for this purpose. The old orbital elements in the article had not been updated in a long time and were quite out of date. Other editors are welcome to observe the results of this change as you'll see the bot begin to update these six parms every couple of weeks, and flag anything that does not look right. Cheers. N2e (talk) 18:24, 21 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't knwo if it's the bot or the referenced data page, but how can the satellite have increased both its apogee and its perigee (and semimajor axis, too) over the past year without an on-board power source? Its orbit is supposed to decay, not increase...--Roentgenium111 (talk) 20:12, 29 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To add another issue, the values are inconsistent. The 132 minute orbit is plausible, and this time did not change significantly over the last 57 years - but then we should be at more than 200,000 orbits now. --mfb (talk) 03:15, 24 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The source link is [3] but there perigee is listed as 28,070 km and all the other values are different as well. This looks like an error in the source, as the orbit is not that high. --mfb (talk) 11:01, 30 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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I bumped into this article while running some things with AWB. I realize this article is very scientific, and written seriously, but as a follower of professional wrestling, it should be noted that there is a re-occurring (Character, point of interest), a drone/remote controlled plane also by the name of Vanguard 1 used by Matt Hardy in a surreal/satirical gimmick. I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a small section for either popular culture or "other media", as there must be other references in the media towards this satellite? Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:38, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The article states The spacecraft is a 1.46 kg (3.2 lb) aluminum sphere 6 inches (152 mm) in diameter,[...] with antennae spanning 3 feet. Six 30 cm (12 in) long antennas[...] protruded from the sphere.. It's unclear to me how it is described as having antennae spanning three feet, when, antenna-sphere-antenna can only be 12"-6"-12", or 30 inches. What am I missing? cheers. anastrophe, an editor he is. 22:32, 12 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The article says that the COSPAR designation is 1958-005B, but the footnote cited there says it is 1958-002B. The footnote is most likely correct, since it was the 2nd successful orbital launch in 1958. I was unaware until reading International Designator that COSPAR designations had been assigned retroactively to objects launched before 1963. Perhaps the "005" was a confusion with Satellite Catalog Number, which is 000000005. (Usually, the leading zeros are dropped.)--JohnASantos (talk) 22:08, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Canadian researchers are very excited to receive information about Vanguard 1 199.43.175.33 (talk) 14:09, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]