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Vanguard was floated out of dock on 9 September 1965 and completed builder's trials in January 1966. She was accepted by MSTS on 28 February 1966 and was expected to enter service in June 1966 following instrumentation testing at Quincy. She was accepted at the Eastern Test Range on 11 October 1966 and was then transferred to the Western Test Range on 17 March 1967, although she ended up serving in the Atlantic." Vanguard was concerned primarily with the insertion of the space vehicle into earth orbit and was to be stationed in the North Atlantic." The ships had different roles in the Apollo program. Vanguard was concerned primarily with the insertion of the space vehicle into earth orbit and was to be stationed in the North Atlantic. Redstone and Mercury were to be stationed in the Indian Ocean near South Africa and in the Pacific between the Canberra and Hawaii tracking stations to monitor the injection of the vehicle into the lunar trajectory for its flight to the moon. The first of these ships to participate in the Apollo program was Vanguard, which supported Apollo 4 (launched on 9 November 1967) as a tracking and communication platform for insertion/injection in the mid-Atlantic. Redstone and Watertown[?] made their initial appearance in January 1968 in support of Apollo 5, the former in the Atlantic and the latter in the Pacific. They played the same roles in support of Apollo 6 in April 1968. For the first manned flight, Apollo 7, Vanguard was positioned near the Bahamas to support orbital insertion, Redstone was stationed in the central Pacific, Mercury was positioned east of Taiwan, and Huntsville was 1,200 miles west of Los Angeles to support reentry. The same four ships supported Apollo 8, Apollo 9, and Apollo 11, with Vanguard in the Atlantic and the other three in the Pacific." After Apollo 11 NASA kept Vanguard on station in the Atlantic for the remaining Apollo flights as a secondary tracking station but released the others, stating that the success of the previous flights made it possible to reduce the number of tracking areas.
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