On 4 October 1957 the Soviet Union placed the first artificial satellite in orbit around the Earth. Sputnik 1 was a small polished metal ball, 58 centimetres across, whose radio beeps could be picked up by amateur operators around the world. Its launch caught the American public by surprise, set off the "Sputnik crisis" in the United States and opened the Space Race between the two superpowers of the Cold War.
A simple satellite in a hurry
The Soviet leadership approved a satellite programme in August 1955, shortly after President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced that the United States would launch one during the International Geophysical Year of 1957–58. The original plan, a heavy laboratory known as Object D, ran into delays. Fearing that the Americans would get there first, the design bureau of the chief rocket designer Sergei Korolev proposed a far simpler craft carrying little more than a radio transmitter. The government approved this "elementary satellite" in February 1957; Object D later flew as Sputnik 3.
The rocket
The launcher was adapted from the R-7, which had been designed as an intercontinental ballistic missile to carry a hydrogen bomb. Its first test flights in May and July 1957 failed, but a launch on 21 August succeeded, and after another success in September Korolev persuaded the authorities to use the next rocket for the satellite. The launch site was a new range at Tyuratam in the Kazakh Soviet republic, now the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Launch and orbit
The rocket lifted off at 19:28:34 UTC on 4 October 1957. Engine problems nearly ended the mission, and the satellite entered an orbit with a high point roughly 500 kilometres lower than intended, circling the Earth every 96.2 minutes. The craft weighed 83.6 kilograms and carried two pairs of long antennas. Its transmitter broadcast on two frequencies for 22 days until its batteries ran down on 26 October. The rocket's large core stage also reached orbit and was visible to the naked eye at night.
Scientists learned from the satellite even though it carried no instruments of its own: the way its orbit decayed revealed the density of the upper atmosphere, and its radio signals gave information about the ionosphere. Sputnik 1 burned up on re-entry on 4 January 1958 after 1,440 orbits.
The American reaction
The launch overturned a widespread American belief that the Soviet Union was technologically backward. Eisenhower himself was less surprised, having been forewarned by spy-plane photographs and intercepted signals of the R-7's capabilities. Public alarm nonetheless pushed Washington into action. The army launched its own satellite, Explorer 1, on 31 January 1958, and the government created the Advanced Research Projects Agency in February 1958, followed by NASA. Congress passed the National Defense Education Act in 1958, offering low-interest loans to students of mathematics and science.
Wider impact
In Britain the launch was greeted with a mix of fear and wonder, and newspapers proclaimed the start of the Space Age. When the Soviet Union soon followed with Sputnik 2, carrying the dog Laika, many British people protested to the Soviet embassy. The satellite even left a mark on English: the San Francisco columnist Herb Caen coined the word "beatnik" in April 1958.
On our maps
Our 1945 and 1960 maps show the Soviet Union, including the Kazakh territory from which Sputnik was launched.