Set of 7 black-and-white photos showing the various stages o - Lot 13

Set of 7 black-and-white photos showing the various stages of assembling the three stages of the Vanguard rocket on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida. 3 photos captioned “US Navy” and numbered USN 709935, USN 709938, and USN 709941. 21 x 25 cm. Vanguard was a small American launch vehicle developed by the NRL (Naval Research Laboratory), whose objective 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.