The Grand Central Rocket Company opened a rocket engine and fuel plant in Mentone, near Redlands, in 1954. In 1956, the company won a contract to build an engine for the Vanguard Rocket, which launched the second US satellite into space, in March 1958, a month after the nation’s first satellite, Explorer 1, was launched, and a few months after the Russian’s Sputnik 1 and 2 were launched. Unlike its more famous precedents, which burned up on re-entry, the small, spherical Vanguard satellite remains in space, and is now the oldest satellite orbiting the earth. In 1961, the Lockheed Propulsion Company bought the Grand Central Rocket Company, and continued to operate and expand the plant, testing rockets at Potrero and Laborde Canyons. The plant closed in 1975, and much of the 1,000-acre site has been turned into infiltration ponds for the Santa Ana River. Contamination at the site is still being addressed, and responsibility for clean up contested.