Celestia Forums

Hey all

For one of Frank Gregorio's (fsgregs) upcoming celestia educational activities, i've modelled the Explorer 1 spacecraft, America's first to orbit the earth. Launched on Feb 1st 1958 (Well before the creation of NASA) it was the modified 4th stage of a Jupiter-C ICBM. With several basic experiments on board, it discovered the Van Allen radiation belts around the Earth. (named after the principal investigator of that experiment)

Grant Hutchinson made the ssc file, from various sources including data from the NSSDC's listing about the spacecraft. The ssc only runs from launch in 1958 until 1970, so you have to run back time to see it! The craft entered a flat spin after a few weeks in orbit, so that's why there are two object listings. (To show the two spin styles)

You can download the model & ssc from the spacecraft page of my website http://homepage.eircom.net/~jackcelestia/ (bottom of page)

But have a look at a few screenshots first! (These came out particularly well, so i've posted all four)





Those shots use 16k or 32k VT for everything, except the clouds which are 4k. (Taken in 1.3.1pre11)

Enjoy!

Hello,

Thank you for uploading this for us. I was unaware of the Explorer and it's mission. Thanks for the background on it, too. Already got it installed.

Thanks Jack
I too was unaware of this satalite, So im off to have a read up about it.

Looks more like a missile. (typical Americans)

It looks very good! Nice job again.

And about it looking like a missile... in my opinion, the Apollo rockets also looked like very big missiles, didnt they?

Darkmiss wrote:Looks more like a missile. (typical Americans)

ElPelado wrote:in my opinion, the Apollo rockets also looked like very big missiles, didnt they?

Well all rockets do a bit, don't they?!! It was the 4th stage of an ICBM anyway, so whaddya expect?!

Jack:

Thanks so much for the model. It is one of the highlights of my new Educational Activity covering the spacecraft of Celestia. This one is already 20 pages long and I haven't come close to covering the many spacecraft that deserve coverage. In fact, I am splitting the Activity into two parts to give these craft the attention they deserve. I am focusing on using this as a comprehensive teaching tool. Each spacecraft gets from one to 5 paragraphs of discussion and of course, a visual stop in Celestia.

I should have the Activity ready in about 2 weeks and posted on my site, along with all the spacecraft that are included in them (I hope).

Frank