Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite, was a joint project of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville, Alabama, which built the launch rocket; the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which built the satellite; and the University of Iowa, where the science instruments were designed. The images below are drawn from the collections of NASA centers and the papers of James Van Allen, used here with permission of the University of Iowa Libraries.