WHEREAS, Fifty years ago, on January 31, 1958, the Explorer 1 satellite launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a Jupiter-C rocket. Although tiny by today’s spacecraft standards, weighing merely 31 pounds, Explorer 1 sprang skyward, carrying with it the enormous hopes and dreams of a Cold War America, a country still reeling from the failure of its first Vanguard project the month before and the former Soviet Union’s shocking launches of Sputnik 1 and 2 the previous fall; and

WHEREAS, We now remember Explorer 1 both for its pioneering place in United States space history and its immediate contributions to science by initially discovering the Van Allen Radiation Belts around Earth. These memories are particularly fond for the developers of Explorer 1, the people of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, which at the time was under contract with the United States Army; and

WHEREAS, Following the launch of Sputnik 1 by the former Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, the United States Army Ballistic Missile Agency was directed to launch a satellite using its Jupiter-C rocket developed under the direction of Dr. Wernher von Braun. JPL received the assignment to design, build, and operate the artificial satellite that would serve as the rocket’s payload, an assignment JPL completed in less than three months; and

WHEREAS, Within a remarkable 84 days, Dr. William Pickering, the Director of JPL, and his team worked with the United States Army Ballistic Missile Agency to develop the science package and communications system of Explorer 1, as well as the high-speed upper stages for the Jupiter-C rocket. This work would mark JPL’s shift in emphasis from rockets to what sits on top of rockets; and

WHEREAS, Although Explorer 1 is gone, its impact on JPL was permanent. Never again would JPL be an obscure army facility laboring away on classified projects. Explorer 1 opened the door to space and, as a result, JPL would never be the same; and

WHEREAS, The years since 1959 have amounted to a golden age of solar system exploration. Advancements in rocketry after World War II enabled our machines to break the grip of Earth’s gravity and travel to the moon and other planets; and

WHEREAS, The United States has sent automated spacecraft, followed by human-crewed expeditions, to explore the moon. In addition, our automated machines have orbited and landed on Venus and Mars, explored the sun’s environment, observed comets and asteroids, and made close-range surveys while flying past Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; and

WHEREAS, This exploration has produced a quantum leap in our knowledge and understanding of the solar system. The electronic sight and other senses of our automated spacecraft have allowed the discovery of previously unknown objects and have revealed color and complexion on worlds that for centuries appeared to Earthbound eyes as fuzzy disks or indistinct points of light; and

WHEREAS, Future historians will likely view these pioneering flights, starting with Explorer 1, and other flights through the solar system as some of the most remarkable achievements of the 20th century; now, therefore, be it