SPUTNIK

On October 4, 1957, Soviet space scientists launched the first manmade Sputnik, or satellite, to orbit the earth. Sputnik had great significance on several counts. It indicated that the USSR was a world leader in science and engineering. It was a great propaganda achievement, enabling the nation's leaders to claim both scientific preeminence and the superiority of the Soviet social system. Sputnik also triggered the space race, as the United States and the USSR committed to an expansive effort to be the first in a series of other space firsts. The USSR followed Sputnik with several other achievements: the first man in space (Yuri Gargarin); the first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova); the first two-person and three-person orbital flights; the first space walk; and so on. Sputnik also revealed that the USSR was or would soon be capable of launching intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Sputnik was important to the Soviet people as well. It demonstrated to them that after years of sacrifice under Stalin the nation was truly on the road to communism based on the achievements of science. Tens of thousands of citizens gathered in the evenings to track Sputnik through the sky, using binoculars or amateur radios to pick up its signal. School children sang odes to Sputnik; poets wrote poems to Sputnik.

Sputnik was only the first Soviet satellite: More than 2,700 others followed into space. While their primary purposes were military, they also served such ends as communication, meteorology, and global prospecting.

See also: gagarin, yuri alexeyevich; space program; united states, relations with

bibliography

McDougall, Walter A. (1985). The Heavens and the Earth. New York: Basic Books.

Paul R. Josephson