A fact from Explorer II appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 3 May 2013. The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that Captains Albert W. Stevens and Orvil A. Anderson set a new altitude record on November 11, 1935 by ascending to 72,395 feet (22,066 m) on the helium balloon Explorer II? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Did you know archive/2013/May. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Explorer II.

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The 'National Geographic Index 1947-1963' pages 30 and 31 have three photos of Explorer I that are credited to "LT. JAMES F. PHILLIPS AND M/SGT. G. B. GILBERT". I'm making the assumption that all three are public domain images as they are works of the U.S. Government employees during the course of their duties.

There is a wonderful article about both the Explorer I and Explorer II missions at https://stratocat.com.ar/artics/explorer-e.htm that also has the same three images found in the 'National Geographic Index 1947-1963' though all three are cropped in different ways. Ideally, the originals would be located:

• https://stratocat.com.ar/artics/imgs/explorer_failure_b.jpg
• https://stratocat.com.ar/artics/imgs/explorer_failure_c.jpg
• https://stratocat.com.ar/artics/imgs/explorer_failure_d.jpg

https://as.amphilsoc.org/repositories/2/archival_objects/426533 may have the original images and also says that the article "The two Explorer Stratosphere Balloon Flights" by Gregory Kennedy was published on 11/24/2016 though it does not say where it was published. --Marc Kupper|talk 07:16, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The citation says Explorer II was cut into a million pieces to give to the "NGS members who supported the mission." Must have been a big support team. Or more likely million is used as a figure of speech to denote very many. Sandcherry (talk) 21:29, 20 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To me it's a simple problem: fold the balloon multiple times, then make the cuts. The material is very thin so cutting multiple layers guillotine-style shouldn't be difficult. Various sources state that more than a million strips were produced. Your disbelief doesn't render that false. Sure, they could have lied about the number, but I don't think they did and there's no evidence to the contrary. There are supposedly plenty of strips still available on various auction sites. Praemonitus (talk) 01:31, 21 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]