AMONG the reporters who received -- the citation (above) at Cape Canaveral Missile-Testing Center last week was William R. Shelton, longtime resident of central Florida. As TIME'S stringer since 1953, Bill Shelton watched missile progress from the beaches and rooftops near the Cape, reported time and again the dramatic story of missilery's growth. Now, as TIME'S Florida correspondent, Shelton was well-primed to provide background and play-by-play action that ended last week with the glow of a new star in the skies. While Shelton covered the Cape launching of Explorer, Washington Correspondents Ed Rees and Sherwin Badger sweated out the rocket shoot with Pentagon brass, and Atlanta Correspondent Lee Griggs went to the Army's Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., to report Huntsville's big stake in the firing. For a narrative account of the history-making night, see the first four pages of NATIONAL AFFAIRS.

THE Russians told almost nothing about the insides of their Sputniks or how they were launched, or what information came back from them. The U.S. told almost everything about the four-stage rocket that tossed the Explorer into space, and about the satellite's instruments, its two radio transmitters, and how to receive and interpret the coded signals that they are sending down from space. For the workings of the Explorer, see SCIENCE, 1958 Alpha.

ANOTHER argument over U.S. scientific progress rages over the question: Is the U.S. falling behind in the race to develop cheap, efficient nuclear power plants to help supply the world's growing need for electricity? After years of what Chairman Lewis L. Strauss considers "impressive progress," the Atomic Energy Commission is beset on all sides--especially by U.S. businessmen who fear, as one said, that "just as little Sputnik has been worth billions to Russia, so we will fail to earn billions if we allow ourselves to slide into a secondary position." For how far and how fast the U.S. is traveling along the road to commercial nuclear power, see BUSINESS ESSAY, Atomic Power.

MANY an artist has proclaimed his right to take a stand in politics, but few politicians have attempted to speak from canvas. Last week, in muffled tones, the art fraternity across the U.S. was hotly debating whether one of the greatest politicians of the age had a right to exhibition in a top art museum. See ART, The Great Churchill Debate.

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