This short National Academy of Sciences educational film from the early 1960s, part of the Planet Earth series, gives viewers a look at how satellites are placed into orbit and the importance they play in advancing technology, science, and space exploration. The film opens with footage of a rocket at a launch pad and men in the control room preparing for liftoff. The rocket blasts off into night (01:05). An illustration shows Alexander the Great using griffins to get to space (01:53). Another illustration shows Jules Verne’s space capsule. Viewers see photographs of the rhesus monkey that was sent into space aboard a U.S. rocket. A radar dish tracks a sounding rocket through the air (03:14). A man works on a satellite (04:01). A truck hauls a large rocket (possibly a Vanguard rocket) to the launch site. The rocket is lifted into position and men pump fuel into the rocket. Footage shows a failed rocket launch, as the rocket explodes just after its boosters ignite (05:10). Two men work on assembling a satellite in a laboratory (06:00). One man works on an eight-ounce tape recorder to broadcast noise back to Earth. A man puts on a satellite’s magnesium shell cover. There is an illustration of Sputnik 3 and Explorer 3 (08:00). Another man moves solar cells on the Explorer 6 satellite. Viewers see tests conducted on a rocket’s nose for ejecting a satellite into space. A Vanguard three-stage rocket takes off with a satellite (09:10). Animation is used to show how the rocket continues into space with the various rocket stages cutting out and falling away. A small rocket spins and pushes the satellite into orbit during the final stage. Viewers see an animation depicting how a satellite orbits Earth (11:24). The first Vanguard rocket is launched in 1958 (11:44). A radar dish locates a satellite. Two men sit in a radar station and monitor signals. Volunteers use telescopes to locate and record the paths of satellites in orbit (13:15). The film shows a special camera at one of the international chain of Optical Observation Stations (14:26). A photograph shows the tracked path of Sputnik 3; another shows Vanguard 2 in 1959. At a computing center, men monitor an IBM 704 computer used for computing tracking data of satellites (15:48). There is a shot of what appears to be another Optical Observation Station located in what looks like the southwest U.S. (17:00). Scientists compute atmospheric density in a room (17:45). Animation is used to show how a satellite in orbit records micrometeorites (18:48). The film then shows the first weather image ever transmitted from a satellite, (from Explorer 6), which shows cloud cover over the central Pacific Ocean (19:30). A man goes to sketch the Van Allen radiation belt on a blackboard in a room (21:11). Men watch a space probe launch from inside the control room. A photograph taken by the third Soviet space probe shows the far side of the moon (23:30). The film uses more illustrations and animations to show projections of future lunar missions. A man sits at a control station monitoring radio signals (25:40). A solar physicist uses a large telescope to examine the Sun. The film shows a map of the stars, then another space probe taking off from a launch pad and flying through the air on its way to space, concluding the film.

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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com