Project Vanguard was a program managed by the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), and designed and built by the Glenn L. Martin Company (now Lockheed-Martin), which intended to launch the first artificial satellite into Earth orbit using a Vanguard rocket[1] as the launch vehicle from Cape Canaveral Missile Annex, Florida.

The solid-propellant rocket needed to spin-up, separate from the first-stage booster, ignite, provide a proper propulsion and trajectory.

The telemetry was picked up at the Air Force Missile Test Center's (AFMTC) tracking station.

[7] Three hundred rail-car loads of V-2 rocket weapons and parts were captured and shipped to the United States, also 126 of the principal designers of the V-2, including Wernher von Braun and Walter Dornberger, went to America.

Von Braun, his brother Magnus von Braun, and seven others decided to surrender to the United States military in Operation Paperclip to ensure they were not captured by the advancing Soviets or shot dead by the Nazis to prevent their capture.

Thus started the Space Race, that gave the drive to put men on the Moon with the Apollo program.