Celebrating 60 Years of America in Space on Jan. 31

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, Florida. 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 U.S. space science.