todayinhistory:October 4th 1957: Sputnik launchedOn this day in 1957, the Soviet Union launched the
todayinhistory:October 4th 1957: Sputnik launchedOn this day in 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite - Sputnik - into space at 10.29pm from the Tyuratam base in the Kazakh Republic. In 1954, the International Council of Scientific Unions called for artificial satellites to be launched between July 1957 and December 1958, as this was when cycles of solar activity would be at a high. A year later, the United States announced plans to launch a satellite. However, the Russians beat America to it, and launched Sputnik (Russian for ‘satellite’) in 1957. The satellite, about the size of a beach ball and weighing 83.6kg, was designed and built by a team under Mikhail Khomyakov, and orbited the earth once every 98 minutes. Sputnik’s launch inaugurated a new era in the Cold War, beginning the space race and escalating tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. In November, the Russians launched Sputnik II, which carried a dog called Laika into space; the original Sputnik burned up in the atmosphere a few months later. The United States, concerned by the Soviet Union’s technological superiority, rushed to launch their own satellite. In January 1958, the United States successfully launched the Explorer I, and in order to continue such research established NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) in July 1958. With the launch of Sputnik the space race was in full motion, as the United States and Soviet Union continued to attempt to best eachother in technological advances. The USSR sent the first man to space in 1961, and achieved a number of space firsts, but it was the United States who successfully landed on the moon in 1969. The Sputnik launch was one of the defining moments of the twentieth century, as not just did it trigger the space race, but it marked a crowning achievement in space technology. -- source link