In 1926, a 10-ft rocket flew 41 ft; 35 years later, NASA honored its creator in space |
Goddard physicist Henry Plotkin inspects the retroreflector array destined for the 1964 Beacon Explorer A satellite, PC: Henry Plotkin/ Nasa On October 29, 1964, a team at NASA‘s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, recorded the first successful laser returns from an artificial satellite. The target was Beacon Explorer B, also known as Explorer…