The Vanguard 1 Satellite holds the record for being in space longer than any other man-made object. Launched by NASA in 1958, the satellite is expected to remain in orbit for more than 200 years into the future. Its durability and resilience has been the inspiration behind our Vanguard release. Just like the Vanguard 1 satellite, our team is working towards building a decentralized and distributed object storage solution capable of withstanding the test of time and outliving its creators.
Today, we are excited to announce the launch of our Vanguard alpha release!
Since the Explorer release in February, we’ve been inviting storage node operators to join our network to build up the supply of available disk space and bandwidth. With the Vanguard release, we will begin inviting clients to create accounts on Tardigrade Satellites so they can start storing and retrieving data from the network. This is a major step toward the beta and production launches, and we invite all developers to join the waitlist to get access to the new V3 network.
What to expect during this release
Over the course of the next few weeks, we will be publishing a few blogs that outline various important parts of the alpha. The first two were published today—this post and [another post announcing the Tardigrade network](https://storj.io/blog/2019/04/introducing-tardigrade
