It was a small, spherical satellite designed to study trapped radiation of various energies, galactic cosmic rays, geomagnetism, radio propagation in the upper atmosphere, and the flux of micrometeorites.

[5] A fluxgate magnetometer was used to measure the component of the magnetic field parallel to the spin axis of the vehicle.

It was intended to obtain measurements at altitudes up to 8 Earth radii, but due to permanent multipole disturbances within the vehicle, the fluxgate magnetometer became saturated and returned no data.

Counts from the GM tube and pulses from the ion chamber were accumulated in separate registers and telemetered by the analog system.

Comparison with results from the Cosmic Ray Ionization Chamber makes it possible to determine the type and energy of particles responsible for the measurement.

Each telescope consists of seven proportional counter tubes, six in a concentric ring around the seventh running parallel along their lengths.

These bundles of tubes lie on their sides projecting through the top of one of the equipment boxes in the hexagonal base of Ranger 1.

[9] The scintillation counter experiment was designed to make direct observations of electrons in the Earth's radiation belts with a detector insensitive to bremsstrahlung.

The instrument was similar to that flown on Pioneer 1 and consisted of a single search coil mounted so that it measured the magnetic field perpendicular to the spacecraft spin axis.

The experiment consisted of an optical unit containing a concave spherical mirror and phototransistor, a video amplifier, timing and logic circuits, and telemetry.

The experiment was designed to test the feasibility of using such instrumentation to obtain low-resolution daylight cloud cover photographs.

The system could produce useful photographs only when the spacecraft's velocity and orbital position were such that successive lines overlapped.

(At apogee, for example, the TV lines were separated by a distance about equal to their length, and hence no meaningful picture could be obtained).

Proper spacecraft orientation was never achieved, resulting in a considerable amount of blank space between successive scan lines.

The scanner's logic circuits also failed to operate normally (only every fourth scan spot could be successfully reproduced), further reducing the resolution.

[12] This Very low frequency (VLF) receiver was designed to study Whistler mode propagation and ionospheric noise on 15.5 kHz signals transmitted from Annapolis, Maryland.

The signals were received on a small electric antenna which was simultaneously used to transit Very high frequency (VHF) telemetry.

With the antenna in a folded configuration for launch, the receiver recorded all data at a sensitivity reduced by about 30 db.

[13] The satellite was launched on top of a Thor-Able rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida into a highly elliptical orbit on 7 August 1959, at 14:24:20 GMT.

The image was a picture of the north central Pacific Ocean, transmitted to a ground station in Hawaii over a 40 minute span.

The satellite was spin-stabilized at 2.8 rotation per second (rps), with the direction of the spin axis having a right ascension of 217° and a declination of 23°.

One VHF transmitter failed on 11 September 1959, and the last contact with the payload was made on 6 October 1959, at which time the solar cell charging current had fallen below that required to maintain the satellite equipment.