Project Orbiter

In the 1920s and 1930s, the German Society for Space Travel (Verein für Raumschiffahrt, referred to as VfR by its founders) began to gain in popularity, with membership growing from outside of Germany as well as within.

The primary cause for the VfR's gaining worldwide appeal was due to the writings of mathematician Hermann Oberth who detailed, in a 1923 publication entitled The Rocket into Interplanetary Space, the mechanics of placing a satellite into Earth orbit.

[2] Arthur C. Clarke popularized this concept even further in 1945, in a paper entitled "Extra-Terrestrial Relays — Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?

In 1954, Wernher von Braun proposed the idea of placing a satellite into orbit at a meeting of Spaceflight committee of the American Rocket Society.

Through "preparedness and good fortune", van Allen later wrote, the experiment was selected as the principal payload (Explorer 1) for the first flight of a four-stage Juno I rocket on 1 February 1958 (GMT).