Explorer 1 was the first successful United States Earth satellite, launched in 1958. Its scientific payload included a radiation counter designed to investigate energetic particles in the near-Earth environment. The mission contributed to the discovery of the trapped-particle regions now called the Van Allen radiation belts.[ref]
Explorer 1 Mission Overview by NASA. Mission history and scientific objectives
An important interpretation problem was that an unexpectedly low count rate could arise when intense radiation saturated the instrument. Combining observations at different orbital positions and evidence from later measurements helped establish a population of trapped energetic particles. The episode illustrates why a detector's response curve and operating range belong to the scientific inference: a displayed count rate need not increase monotonically with the true incident flux in an overloaded instrument.[ref]
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