The base of the jovial groove as the little group walked was a lilting, repeating riff on the kora, the 21-string harp-lute that a musician played with its base propped against his torso, plucking with his thumbs. â
The Vanguard team was still working on a test vehicle (TV-2) designed to test the first stage of the rocket when they learned of the launch of the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, by the USSR on October 4, 1957. On December 2, the Department of Defense announced the imminent launch of TV-3.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration began in 1958 as a reaction to Sputnik and as a means for turning missiles into launch vehicles for America's civilian space efforts.he Army's Wernher von Braun, seen here with a model rocket, was prevented from making America's first attempt to put a satellite in orbit and was forced to defer to a team from the Naval Research Laboratory. When the Navy's Vanguard failed, von Braun put America in space with Explorer in January, 1958.