The Beep Heard Round the World: Sputnik Opens the Space Age
1957 · event
On 4 October 1957 a polished metal sphere the size of a beach ball began circling the Earth every 96 minutes, transmitting a simple beep-beep-beep that any amateur radio operator could hear. The Space Age had begun, and the planet, for the first time, had a man-made moon.
In America the shock was seismic: the "Sputnik moment" created NASA within a year, poured money into science classrooms, and launched the race that would end on the Sea of Tranquility twelve years later.
Sputnik itself burned up after three months, having travelled seventy million kilometres. Its descendants, thousands of satellites carrying weather, television, GPS and this very web page, are all children of that first small sphere that taught humanity to look up differently.