The U.S. Signal Corps announced the discovery of a new satellite of Earth in the latter part of July, and newspapers everywhere broke out in a rash of pseudo-scientific comment. The new satellite had been picked up by Signal Corps radars, in the course of experiments to work out a technique for detecting guided missiles at extreme range, while they were still rising in their high-arched flight beyond the atmosphere. The radars picked up indications of an object of appreciable size at a distance of four thousand miles, which—the moon-echo aside—was a record for radar detection.
Immediately the observation was made it was repeated, and repeated again and again, for verification. When the confirmatory fixes were computed, a course and speed for the unseen object proved it to have exact orbit
