The base of the jovial groove as the little group walked was a lilting, repeating riff on the kora, the 21-string harp-lute that a musician played with its base propped against his torso, plucking with his thumbs. â
The Vanguard team was still working on a test vehicle (TV-2) designed to test the first stage of the rocket when they learned of the launch of the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, by the USSR on October 4, 1957. On December 2, the Department of Defense announced the imminent launch of TV-3.
Just before dawn on the morning of November 15, 1988, the Energiya rocket stood fueled and ready on the launch pad at Baikonur, the Soviet Union's launch site. Mated to the booster was the Buran space shuttle orbiter, ready for its maiden flight. It looked to strongly reminiscent of NASA's Space Transportation System, colloquially known as the space shuttle, but the two spacecraft weren't identical. Footage of Buran's 1988 launch.