Set of three original black-and-white photos: two photos of - Lot 8

Set of three original black-and-white photos: two photos of the Vanguard II satellite and one of its launch on February 17, 1959, aboard the Vanguard SLV-4 rocket. Vanguard was a small American launch vehicle developed by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), whose goal was to place the first artificial satellite into orbit. However, after 9 failures out of 12 launches between 1956 and 1959, the Juno 1 launch vehicle was tasked with launching the first satellite into orbit—Explorer 1, launched on February 1, 1958—without calling the Vanguard program into question. On March 17, 1958, Vanguard finally achieved success with Vanguard 1, which became the second American satellite in orbit. All photos are from the archives of the public relations department of the Martin Company in Baltimore (which later became Martin-Marietta and then Lockheed-Martin). All documents are original Martin documents and are in black and white.