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After the US Naval Research Laboratory's Project Vanguard was chosen by the DOD Committee on Special Capabilities, over the ABMA's proposal to use a modified Redstone ballistic missile as a satellite launch vehicle, the ABMA was ordered to stop work on satellites and focus, instead, on intermediate missile s.
Wernher von Braun, disobeying orders, continued work on the design for what became the Jupiter-C IRBM. This was a 3 stage rocket, which, by coincidence, could be used to launch a satellite (in the Juno I configuration). In September 1956, the Jupiter-C was launched with a 30-lb dummy satellite. It is generally believed that, at this time, the ABMA could have put a satellite into orbit had the US government allowed ABMA to do so. A year later, the SovietsThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR ( Russian: ; tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (SSSR) also called the Soviet Union ( ; tr. Sovetsky Soyuz , was a state in much of the northern region of Eurasia that existed from 1922 until 1 launched Sputnik I.