As a shortwave radio and numbers station geek, I am intimately familiar with the Earth's Ionosphere, that thin layer of magical goodness that allows short radio waves to bounce around and skip across much of the planet.

During the height of the Cold War, American scientists were also geeked out on the Ionosphere, because using it was the only reliable way to communicate over long distances, should ground-based microwave or undersea cable communication become unusable because of those godless commies. Not happy to accept the Ionosphere as nature intended it, they attempted to create an artificial Ionosphere by launching 480 million tiny copper needles into orbit, which briefly gave our planet an artificial ring in 1963.

Though successful, the needle cloud never became a permanent reality, as communications satellites were developed and deployed shortly after the experiment concluded. The copper needles' orbit eventually decayed, and they drifted back to Earth in the 1970s, untouched by the atmosphere due to their tiny size.

Many of the needles gathered together in Las Vegas in 1982, where they can still be seen performing "Rocket Man," nightly at the Stardust.

(via reddit)