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.
Vela 6911 is presumably one of the Advanced Vela pair launch launched on 23 May 1969 (perigee 77,081 km, apogee 145,637 km, inclination 61.6 deg), and had thus been operating over ten years at the time of the 1979 detection.