Immediately following World War II, Germany's rocket treasure, Wernher von Braun, and his team of engineers, were transported to the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico to reassemble their V-2 rockets for military testing by the US Army. A few American scientists were invited to load the V-2s with instruments that might reveal secrets of the upper atmosphere. Von Braun supported the attachment of scientific gadgets to the V-2s, but he really wanted his rockets to fulfill a grander dream and lead to the human exploration of space.
He was hoping to develop his A-9 and A-10 rockets -- enormous spaceships capable of carrying material into orbit for building space stations that would allow travel to other planets -- but the Army was not interested. Von Braun found himself stuck simply assembling the rockets he had invented years earlier.
In the early 1950s, von Braun began to consider building small satellites as simple models for larger manned space stations. While working at the old Redstone arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, he built the Redstone rocket, an improved version of the V-2, and pushed for the launch of a satellite.
