Project SCORE Launches an Early Communications Satellite
Project SCORE launched on December 18, 1958, carrying a communications experiment into orbit aboard an Atlas rocket.
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The Event
Project SCORE launched on December 18, 1958, carrying a communications experiment into orbit aboard an Atlas rocket.
The Wider Story
The mission demonstrated storing and relaying messages from space. A recorded presidential message became a widely publicized part of the experiment.
Putting the Event in Perspective
It was not a modern continuously operating communications network.
Reading the Historical Record
An illustration should use the early Atlas configuration and should not imitate archival presidential speech as authentic audio.
About the Historical Recreation
The accompanying visual is an illustrative reconstruction: an Atlas rocket launching at night in 1958 followed by an illustrative early orbital vehicle. It is not authentic archival footage, an eyewitness record or additional evidence for the event.
Sources
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