After World War II, the DOD began a serious research push into the fields of rocketry and upper atmosphere sciences to ensure American leadership in technology. As part of this push, President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved a plan to orbit a scientific satellite as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY) for the period, July 1, 1957 to December 31, 1958, a cooperative effort to gather scientific data about the Earth. Quickly, the Soviet Union jumped in, announcing plans to orbit its own satellite. (See Sputnik 1.)
The Naval Research Laboratory's Project Vanguard was chosen on 9 September 1955 to support the IGY effort, but while it enjoyed exceptional publicity throughout the second half of 1955, and all of 1956, the technological demands upon the program were too great and the funding levels too small to ensure success.
The launch of Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957 shoved the US satellite program into crisis mode. Playing technological catch-up, the United States launched its first Earth satellite on January 31, 1958, when Explorer 1 documented the existence of radiation zones encircling the Earth.
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