Today in History - 1958

President Dwight Eisenhower received a telephone call shortly after 10:48 a.m. on his direct line to Cape Canaveral, Florida informing him the launch of the Explorer I satellite was successful.

Explorer I was put into orbit around the earth by a Jupiter-C rocket. Radio signals from the transmitter aboard the 30.8 pound satellite were picked up in California within a few minutes after the launch.

The first U.S. space satellite, Explorer I, orbited the earth every 114 minutes at a maximum height of 2,000 miles and a minimum altitude of 230 miles. Its purpose was to measure cosmic radiation found in space and send the data back to earth.