Friday, July 02, 2010

50-year anniversary of von Braun team's joining NASA

On July 1, 1960, the space-related programs, functions, and personnel of the Army Ballistics Missile Agency were transferred to NASA to form the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center. This included Wernher von Braun and most of the engineers who came over to the US in Operation Paperclip. The ABMA team had launched America's first satellites, Explorer I, and followed that up with more satellite and Pioneer lunar probes. Work done at ABMA on boosters included the development of Redstone (which lofted Alan Shepherd into space), Jupiter, Jupiter C (the modified Redstone used for Explorer I) and the beginnings of that became the Saturn series that took humans to the Moon.

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