EXPLORER I: “Late in the evening of Jan. 31, 1958, the United States took its first step into space with the launch of the Explorer 1 satellite from Cape Canaveral, Fla.,” stated a press release from NASA. “The slender, 30-pound satellite would yield a major scientific discovery — the Van Allen radiation belts circling our planet — and ushered in six decades of groundbreaking U.S. space science and human exploration.”

The agency is celebrating 60 years in space today with events in Florida, California and Washington, D.C.

If you’d like a little help imagining or remembering what that time was like, hearing of that first launch into space, NASA announced a new website with information about Explorer I: go.nasa.gov/Explorer1. The site includes images and a timeline of the agency’s accomplishments.

Little by little, NASA continues to reach further into the vast universe. Three big projects are in the works to take place over the next couple of years.

“During the next two years, NASA will launch the first spacecraft to ‘touch’ the Sun, a space observatory that will search for the first light of the early universe, and a mission to explore the deep interior of Mars,” the agency stated.

Imagine what we might accomplish in the next 60 years.

The Associated Press reported in the Feb. 1, 1958, edition of The Era, “The Army fired a tube of metal more than six feet long into an orbit around the earth tonight.

“A 70-foot-long Jupiter-C launching vehicle sent the satellite more than 200 miles into space, and clusters of smaller rockets pushed it to orbital velocity of 18,000 miles hour.

“The Jupiter-C roared away from its launching pad into a starry sky at 10:48 p.m. (EST).”

It was two hours later that President Dwight D. Eisenhower made the announcement that the U.S. had successfully launched its first satellite into orbit.