Beep, Beep, Beep

The sound of the first artificial satellite orbiting the Earth shook the world in October 1957. You couldn’t miss the philatelic echo either, as Sputnik was lavishly celebrated by stamps from the Soviet Union and its allies

- Jeff Dugdale

It was on October 4, 1957, that the space age dawned. A small metal sphere with four whip aerials was successfully launched into orbit by the Soviet Union, becoming the Earth’s first man-made satellite.

Sputnik 1’s repetitive ‘beep beep’ transmission, which could be picked up not only by professional but also by amateur radio operators, astonished people around the globe. If they looked into the sky in the right place at the right time, they could even see the sunlight reflecting off it.

If everyone was transfixed, many were also alarmed. In the midst of the Cold War, they wondered whether this new technology could be used for espionage, or for delivering weapons.

Rocket science Though rocketry was over a thousand years old, and had been used for belligerent purposes by the Chinese against the Mongols as early as the 13th century, the real technological breakthrough had come during World War II. German scientists developed the V-2, the first long-range guided ballistic missile and the first man-made object to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.

Over the next decade, the technology was further developed by both the USSR and the United States. The Soviet programme was led by Sergei Korolev, who had previously been imprisoned for six years during the Stalinist purges, while the American programme was built around Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who had been spirited away to a new life in the US at the end of the war.

International Geophysical Year, which was curiously slated to last for 18 months, from July 1957 to December 1958, was seen by both superpowers as a window during which they might launch a satellite into orbit. In June 1957, the Soviet Union brazenly announced the broadcast frequencies such a satellite would use: 20,009 and 40,002 megacycles.