Saturday, August 27, 2011

50 YA - Explorer XIII studies Micrometeorites

Scout rocket blasts off.

On August 25, 1961 NASA launched Explorer 13 on a short mission to study the tiny rocks we could find in space between the Earth and the Moon. The space probe was launched aboard a Scout rocket from the Wallops Island launch facilities. Because of the shape of the counting device, it was nicknamed the "beer-can satellite". Impacts with the detector were reported by radio to tracking facilities. It was last heard from on August 27th, and NASA announced on August 29th that the probe had re-entered the atmosphere and burned up.

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