Sixty years ago this month a small silver orb made the first-ever orbit of planet Earth.
On the night of 4 October 1957 an R7 ‘Semyorka’ rocket launched from the Tyuratam missile range (now Baikonur Cosmodrome) in Kazakhstan. The 83kg satellite it delivered into orbit would change the world forever. As Sputnik transmitted its monotonous series of beeps to the world below, it announced the beginning of the Space Age.
Sputnik was a major scientific milestone, but it also had a massive political impact. The fact that this breakthrough had been made by the Soviet Union terrified the West and opened up a new front in the Cold War.
The satellite’s origins lay in the arms race that followed the Second World War. After the Americans had dropped their atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviets quickly developed a nuclear weapon of their own – but with no long-range bombers and no airstrips anywhere in range of the US, they had no way to deliver it. What they needed was a missile; a missile 10 times more powerful than anything that had been built before.
To build this missile Stalin appointed Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, a talented aeronautical engineer who would become the chief designer of the entire Soviet space programme. Korolev was undoubtedly the right man to build the missile, but he wasn’t really interested in warfare. He was interested in space exploration and from earliest of the days of the missile programme he was preparing to send his rockets into orbit.
By the mid 1950s the Soviets were working on a satellite named Object D. The plan was to launch it in 1957, as part of the International Geophysical Year. It would weigh over a tonne and would carry instruments to study the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field, as well as the solar wind and cosmic rays.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October 2017 من BBC Sky at Night Magazine.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October 2017 من BBC Sky at Night Magazine.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Could We Find Aliens by Looking for Their Solar Panels?- Designed to reflect ultraviolet and infrared, the panels have a unique fingerprint
Researchers searching for life beyond Earth spend a lot of time thinking about what telltale signs might be detectable astronomically. Forms of unambiguous evidence for the presence of life on another world are known as biosignatures. By extension, techno signatures are indicators of activity by intelligent, civilisation-building life.
Antimatter- In our continuing series, Govert Schilling looks at antimatter, the strange counterpart to most of the matter filling our Universe
Particles and corresponding antiparticles are very much alike, except they have opposite electrical charges. For instance, the antiparticle of the electron - known as the positron - has the same tiny mass, but while electrons carry a negative electrical charge, positrons are positively charged.
Where Have All The Milky Way's Early Stars Gone?- Our Galaxy has a curious lack of pristine stars
The Big Bang produced a Universe filled almost exclusively with hydrogen and helium; all other elements - what astronomers call metals - were produced by stars, supernovae and everything that happens later. So if you can pick out a pristine star with no metals polluting it from among the billions in the Milky Way, then you are likely to have a star dating from our Galaxy's earliest days.
Inside The Sky At Night - Two years ago, exoplanet scientist Hannah Wakeford received some of the first data from the JWST
Two years ago, exoplanet scientist Hannah Wakeford received some of the first data from the JWST. In July's Sky at Night, we discovered what she's learned since then.
How to stack DSLR data in Siril
Easily combine multiple frames to boost detailin your astro photos
Lunar occultation of Saturn
You'll need to strike a balance on 21 August to capture the Moon covering the ringed planet
How to plot a variable star light curve
A rewarding project to chart stars that change brightness
Smartphone photography with a telescope
Mary Mcintyre explains how to get impressive night-sky images using your phone
Once-a-century solar storm is overdue
If a Carrington Event struck today it would be catastrophic, says Minna Palmroth
The new era of human spaceflight
There's been a step-change in crewed space missions since the dawn of the 21st century. Ben Evans charts its course and looks ahead to future horizons
