SPUTNIK LAUNCHED:

More Cyber backwater History for you.....................PEACE......................Scott


SPUTNIK LAUNCHED:
October 4, 1957

The Soviet Union inaugurates the "Space Age" with its launch of Sputnik, the
world's first artificial satellite. The spacecraft, named Sputnik after the
Russian word for "satellite," was launched at 10:29 p.m. Moscow time from the
Tyuratam launch base in the Kazakh Republic. Sputnik had a diameter of 22 inches
and weighed 184 pounds and circled Earth once every hour and 36 minutes.
Traveling at 18,000 miles an hour, its elliptical orbit had an apogee (farthest
point from Earth) of 584 miles and a perigee (nearest point) of 143 miles.
Visible with binoculars before sunrise or after sunset, Sputnik transmitted
radio signals back to Earth strong enough to be picked up by amateur radio
operators. Those in the United States with access to such equipment tuned in and
listened in awe as the beeping Soviet spacecraft passed over America several
times a day. In January 1958, Sputnik's orbit deteriorated, as expected, and the
spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere.Officially, Sputnik was launched to
correspond with the International Geophysical Year, a solar period that the
International Council of Scientific Unions declared would be ideal for the
launching of artificial satellites to study Earth and the solar system. However,
many Americans feared more sinister uses of the Soviets' new rocket and
satellite technology, which was apparently strides ahead of the U.S. space
effort. Sputnik was some 10 times the size of the first planned U.S. satellite,
which was not scheduled to be launched until the next year. The U.S. government,
military, and scientific community were caught off guard by the Soviet
technological achievement, and their united efforts to catch up with the Soviets
heralded the beginning of the "space race."The first U.S. satellite, Explorer,
was launched on January 31, 1958. By then, the Soviets had already achieved
another ideological victory when they launched a dog into orbit aboard Sputnik
2. The Soviet space program went on to achieve a series of other space firsts in
the late 1950s and early 1960s: first man in space, first woman, first three
men, first space walk, first spacecraft to impact the moon, first to orbit the
moon, first to impact Venus, and first craft to soft-land on the moon. However,
the United States took a giant leap ahead in the space race in the late '60s
with the Apollo lunar-landing program, which successfully landed two Apollo 11
astronauts on the surface of the moon in July 1969.