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The History of Space Exploration. View leveled Article. Educational Resources in Your Inbox. Educational Resources in Your Inbox Join our community of educators and receive the latest information on National Geographic's resources for you and your students. But lofting something as heavy as Sputnik 1 was quite a feat in October Two months later, the United States tried to launch its first satellite — the 3.
Soviet space officials had wanted the nation's first satellite to be much bigger than a beach ball. The original plan called for lofting a nearly 3,lb. But development of this satellite, code-named "Object D," progressed more slowly than expected, and Soviet officials grew increasingly worried that the United States might beat them to space.
So, they decided to precede the launch of Object D with a "simplest satellite," or "prosteishy sputnik" in Russian. The literal translation of "sputnik," by the way, is "traveling companion. However, researchers did learn some things about Earth's atmosphere by studying the beep-beep-beep radio signals emitted by the satellite.
The hulking Object D reached orbit as Sputnik 3 in May , six months after Sputnik 2, which famously lofted a dog named Laika. The Soviet space program went on to achieve a series of other space firsts in the late s and early s: first man in space, first woman, first three men, first space walk, first spacecraft to impact the moon, first to orbit the moon, first to impact Venus, and first craft to soft-land on the moon.
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But in , thanks to nine brilliant In the summer of , Janis Joplin was a drifter; four years later, she was a rock-and-roll legend. Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox.
Created by Darren Star and Circling the Earth every 98 minutes, it used a radio beacon that was able to pinpoint spots on the Earth's surface. She said the Soviet plans for a "sophisticated" satellite "fell by the wayside, while the Americans persisted in their determination to launch an exclusively civilian satellite system.
Sputnik may have been a compromise, but in the eyes of the world it was a large feat. The beeping noise it played from space echoed in worldwide radio broadcasts, as well as on television sets.
The satellite continued transmitting signals for 22 days until its batteries died; it fell back into the atmosphere and was destroyed in early The upper stage of the rocket was visible with the naked eye, Lewis added, while the satellite itself was visible in telescopes.
Even before the United States had a chance to launch its own satellite, the Soviets moved another step ahead. They launched Sputnik 2 on Nov. Since the early s, both countries had been launching animals into space — mainly monkeys, chimps and dogs — in order to test their ability to launch a living organism into space and bring it back alive and unharmed.
Unfortunately, Laika's trip into space was one-way only. A re-entry strategy could not be worked out in time for the launch. It is unknown exactly how long Laika lived in orbit — perhaps a few hours or a few days — until the power to her life-support system gave out.
Sputnik 2 burned up in the upper atmosphere in April So the Americans turned to a parallel rocket development program at the Army's Ballistic Missile Agency, which included participation from von Braun. That project — Explorer 1 — successfully launched on board the Juno 1 rocket on Feb.
Explorer 1 discovered the Van Allen Belts , a radiation field that surrounds the Earth. Both the United States and the Soviet Union heavily invested in spacecraft development in the coming decade, sending robotic explorers to the moon, Venus, Mars in the s.
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