Sputnik at sixty: five facts to know about the world’s first satellite

The launch of Sputnik on October 4th, 1957, started the space race between the Soviet Union and United States. Both countries were working fast to see how they could send man-made objects into orbit, and in response to US President Dwight Eisenhower’s pledge to send an American satellite into orbit in 1957 to celebrate the International Geophysical Year, the Soviet space engineers raced to launch their satellite first. More

(Source: euronews - Oct 4)