Sputnik 1 (1957): The First Satellite and the Space Race

Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite ever placed in orbit around Earth. Launched by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 from a remote test range in Kazakhstan, the small, beeping metal sphere proved that the USSR possessed rockets powerful enough to reach space, and by implication to strike any point on the globe. Its launch shocked the United States and its allies and began the Space Race, the Cold War competition that would lead, twelve years later, to people walking on the Moon.

Background: rockets, missiles and the Geophysical Year

The technology behind Sputnik grew out of the Second World War. Germany’s V-2 ballistic missile had shown that large liquid-fuelled rockets could fly to the edge of space, and after 1945 both the Soviet Union and the United States collected German engineers, documents and hardware. The Soviet programme was soon led by Sergei Korolev, a gifted engineer who had himself been imprisoned in Stalin’s purges and released during the war. His design bureau, OKB-1, developed a series of missiles of growing power.

The decisive project was the R-7, approved in 1954 as the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). It was designed to carry a heavy nuclear warhead some 8,000 kilometres, a task that demanded far more thrust than any earlier rocket. The R-7 used a central core stage surrounded by four strap-on boosters, all firing at lift-off, for a total of twenty main combustion chambers. After several failures, it made its first successful long-range flight on 21 August 1957.

Scientists had also been discussing satellites. The International Geophysical Year (IGY), an international scientific programme running from July 1957 to December 1958, invited nations to study Earth and its upper atmosphere. In July 1955 the White House announced that the United States would launch a satellite during the IGY, and within days Soviet scientists said their country would do the same. Few in the West took the Soviet statement seriously.

Designing a “simple satellite”

Korolev and the engineer Mikhail Tikhonravov had pressed for years to use the R-7 to launch a satellite, and the Soviet government gave approval in early 1956. The original plan, known as Object D, was a heavy scientific laboratory of well over a tonne. It fell behind schedule, and Korolev feared that the Americans might get into orbit first.

In early 1957 he won permission to build a much simpler spacecraft instead. It was designated PS-1, short for prosteishiy sputnik, “simplest satellite”. (The Russian word sputnik means “fellow traveller” or “companion” and is the ordinary Russian term for a satellite.) The design was deliberately modest so that it could be built quickly and reliably.

PS-1 was a sphere of polished aluminium alloy 58 centimetres across, weighing 83.6 kilograms. Inside, in an atmosphere of pressurised nitrogen, were silver-zinc batteries, a fan and temperature controls, and two radio transmitters working on 20.005 and 40.002 megahertz. Four whip antennas, about 2.4 to 2.9 metres long, swept back from the sphere. Its gleaming finish helped regulate temperature, and its shape made it easy to track. The academician Mstislav Keldysh, a leading mathematician, helped coordinate the scientific side of the programme.

The launch and the world’s reaction

The rocket used was a lightened version of the R-7, stripped of unnecessary military equipment. It stood on the pad at the Tyuratam test range, built from 1955 on the steppe of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic and later known to the world as the Baikonur Cosmodrome. At 22:28:34 Moscow time on 4 October 1957 (19:28 GMT), it lifted off.

The flight was not flawless: one booster engine was slow to reach full power, and the core stage shut down slightly early. Even so, about five minutes after launch the satellite separated into an elliptical orbit. Its lowest point (perigee) was about 215 kilometres above Earth and its highest point (apogee) about 939 kilometres. It completed one circuit roughly every 96 minutes.

Korolev’s team waited until ground stations picked up the satellite’s signal on its first full orbit before reporting success to Moscow. The Soviet news agency TASS then issued a brief, factual announcement. The next morning Pravda carried the news without banner headlines; only when the scale of the world’s reaction became clear did the Soviet leadership, under Nikita Khrushchev, turn Sputnik into a major propaganda triumph.

Sputnik’s transmitters sent out a simple, repeating “beep-beep” in short pulses. Because the frequencies were chosen to be within range of ordinary short-wave receivers, radio amateurs across the world could hear it, and American radio and television networks broadcast the sound. The signal was the best possible proof that a Soviet object was really circling overhead.

Many people in North America and Europe went outside at dawn and dusk to look for it. What most of them saw was the R-7’s core stage, about 26 metres long, which had also reached orbit and reflected far more sunlight than the small satellite. The tiny sphere itself was difficult to see without binoculars.

Sputnik also had a scientific value. Tracking how its orbit slowly decayed told researchers about the density of the upper atmosphere, and the way its radio signals passed through the ionosphere gave information about that electrically charged layer. The satellite’s batteries were exhausted on 26 October 1957, after about three weeks of transmission. It stayed in orbit, silent, until 4 January 1958, when it re-entered the atmosphere and burned up after roughly 1,400 orbits.

Key people

Sergei Korolev (1907–1966) was the chief designer of the R-7 and the driving force behind Sputnik. His identity was a state secret, and he was referred to in public only as the “Chief Designer” until his death in 1966.

Mikhail Tikhonravov (1900–1974) was a rocket pioneer who led early Soviet studies of artificial satellites and helped shape the PS-1 design.

Mstislav Keldysh (1911–1978) was a mathematician and leading figure in the Soviet Academy of Sciences who coordinated scientific work on early satellites.

Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971), the Soviet leader, was at first lukewarm about satellites but quickly recognised their propaganda value and pressed Korolev for further spectacular launches.

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969), the US president, publicly played down Sputnik’s military significance, which many Americans took as complacency.

The “Sputnik crisis” in the United States

In the United States the launch caused what became known as the Sputnik crisis. Newspapers and politicians warned that a rocket able to orbit a satellite could also deliver a hydrogen bomb to an American city. Critics, including the Senate majority leader Lyndon B. Johnson, held hearings on American preparedness, and talk of a “missile gap” between the two superpowers became a major political issue.

Eisenhower privately knew from secret U-2 reconnaissance flights that the Soviet missile force was not as large as many feared, and he had also wanted a civilian scientific satellite to establish the principle that spacecraft could fly over other countries. But he could not reveal his intelligence, and his calm public statements did little to reassure people.

The blow was repeated on 3 November 1957, when the Soviet Union launched the far heavier Sputnik 2, carrying the dog Laika. Then on 6 December 1957 the first attempt to launch the US Navy’s Vanguard satellite, broadcast on live television, ended when the rocket lost thrust and exploded on the pad at Cape Canaveral. Newspapers mocked it as “Flopnik” and “Kaputnik”.

The United States finally reached orbit on 31 January 1958, when an Army team led by Wernher von Braun launched Explorer 1, whose instruments detected the radiation zones later called the Van Allen belts.

Consequences

Sputnik reshaped American science and government. In February 1958 the Department of Defense created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, later DARPA), which went on to fund research that produced the ARPANET, a forerunner of the internet. In July 1958 Congress passed the act that created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the founding of NASA gave the United States a civilian agency to run its space programme from October that year.

In September 1958 the National Defense Education Act provided federal money for science, mathematics and foreign-language teaching and for student loans. School curricula were revised, and spending on research and university education rose sharply in the following decade.

For the Soviet Union, Sputnik began a run of space “firsts”: the first animal in orbit, the first probes to the Moon, and in 1961 the first human spaceflight by Yuri Gagarin. These successes became powerful symbols of Soviet prestige at home and in the developing world.

Myths and facts

Myth: crowds watched Sputnik 1 cross the sky. Most sightings were of the rocket’s core stage, a much larger and brighter object, rather than the satellite itself.

Myth: Sputnik was a spy satellite. PS-1 carried no cameras or military sensors. Its only payload was its radio transmitters and the sensors that adjusted their signals.

Myth: the United States was far behind in rocket technology. American engineers had capable rockets, notably the Army’s Jupiter-C, which launched Explorer 1. The Soviet lead in 1957 owed much to the R-7’s great power and to American decisions to keep the satellite programme separate from military missiles.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1954, May: The Soviet government approves development of the R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile.
• 1955, July: The United States and then the Soviet Union announce plans to launch satellites during the International Geophysical Year.
• 1957, 21 August: The R-7 makes its first successful long-range test flight.
• 1957, 4 October: Sputnik 1 is launched from Tyuratam and enters orbit.
• 1957, 26 October: Sputnik 1’s batteries run out and its transmissions stop.
• 1957, 3 November: Sputnik 2 is launched, carrying the dog Laika.
• 1957, 6 December: The first US Vanguard launch attempt fails on live television.
• 1958, 4 January: Sputnik 1 re-enters the atmosphere and burns up.
• 1958, 31 January: The United States launches Explorer 1, its first satellite.
• 1958, 29 July: President Eisenhower signs the act creating NASA.

Why it matters

Sputnik 1 opened the Space Age. A simple sphere with two radios demonstrated that orbit was reachable, turned the Cold War into a race for technological prestige, and pushed both superpowers to invest heavily in rockets, science and education. The thousands of satellites that now provide communications, weather forecasts and navigation all trace their lineage to that first beeping signal of October 1957.