Sputnik: The Satellite That Changed Everything

In October 1957, when Sputnik had already begun to orbit the Earth, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev granted an interview to James Reston, Moscow correspondent for the New York Times.

Reston: On the subject of the man-made earth satellite, I would like to ask you, Mr. Khrushchev, were you present at its launch and have you ever witnessed, unlike President Eisenhower, a nuclear weapons test?

Khrushchev: I will answer both questions at once: no, I haven’t. After the satellite was launched, I was told that the rocket had taken a westerly course and that the satellite was already circling the Earth. I congratulated the entire engineering team with this outstanding achievement and calmly went to bed.

Reston: If I may ask, why was the satellite launch kept a secret? I thought that a treaty had been reached to announce satellite launches in advance. Scientists from around the world would have been able to prepare their equipment to observe it.

Khrushchev: There is no such treaty. If we had announced the date of the satellite launch in advance, we would again have been accused of just jabbering to have a psychological effect on the people in capitalist countries and of just, to put it simply, boasting. For this reason we decided to quietly, modestly launch a satellite and to announce it when it was already circling the earth.

The launch really was prepared “quietly, modestly.” During the first days of October, life in the USSR went on as usual. The newspapers regaled readers with reports about the upcoming celebration of the 40th anniversary of the revolution and depressed them with tales of the suffering of workers in capitalist countries. In Italy, Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti was exposing the United States and the Catholic church. In France, Marcel Cachin demanded an immediate cessation to his country’s war in Algeria. The Americans, with Eisenhower at their helm, were hatching various schemes. American democracy had shown its “true colors” during racial unrest in Little Rock. The UN was once again doing the bidding of American imperialists and, instead of letting Czechoslovakia – as nominated by the USSR – serve a term on the Security Council, had pushed through Japan. In Yugoslavia, the trial of the dissident Milovan Djilas was getting underway. 

But in the land of the Soviets, everything was as it should be. Volunteers were setting out to harvest the Virgin Lands and the population was beginning another academic year of party education, where, naturally, lectures were being read about the approaching anniversary of the Great October Revolution. 

Actually, the October anniversary would not be celebrated until November 7, but the Soviet people were not to be left without festive occasions. October 1 would mark the start of large-scale celebrations to congratulate China with the anniversary of the proclamation of the People’s Republic. “Eight years ago, on October 1, 1949, the firing of a victory salvo on Peking’s Tiananmen Square told the world of the birth of a new state – the People’s Republic of China.” It would be another forty years before tanks would appear on Tiananmen Square. For now, the Chinese Embassy in Moscow held a grand reception, although Khrushchev did not show up to congratulate the celebrants – perhaps an early sign of the impending cooling in relations between the two countries. 

And there were other joyous occasions. The Vostok-1 station marked its first half-year in Antarctica. Without waiting for the anniversary of the revolution, the 40th year since the publication of Lenin’s State and Revolution was being marked – yet another occasion for speeches and meetings. Yakutia was being congratulated with the 325th anniversary of its accession to the Russian State, and the republic was being awarded the Order of Lenin as part of the commemoration. For those craving richer entertainment, a film was being shown of the arrival of Afghanistan’s King Mohammed Zahir Shah in the Soviet Union. For now, there was friendship with Afghanistan. Even if it had a king (which the Soviet people, of course, did not like), at least it had been the first country to recognize Bolshevik Russia, so relations had to be strengthened. 

It was only good form to announce the fulfillment of the annual plan in time for the November celebrations, and Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Cherkasskaya oblast reported this achievement on October 4, not realizing that on this day something of much greater significance was taking place. 

The next day, the front pages of all Soviet newspapers featured triumphant reports that a man-made satellite had been launched into orbit. 

[Its] orbital velocity is approximately 8,000 meters per second. Sputnik follows an elliptical trajectory around the Earth and its flight can be observed through the rays of the rising and setting sun with the aid of the simplest optical instruments (binoculars, telescopes, etc.). 

Sputnik will travel at an altitude of 900 kilometers above the earth’s surface. Each complete orbit will take 1 hour and 35 minutes. It will pass over the Moscow City region twice – at 1:46 and 6:42 a.m. Moscow time.

Sputnik has a spherical shape with a diameter of 58 centimeters and a weight of 86.6 kilograms. Two transmitters ensure reliable reception of radio signals by a wide range of amateur radio operators. The signals take the form of telegraph transmissions lasting approximately 0.3 seconds with a pause of the same duration.

Now it started. Amateur radio operators from all over the world rushed to catch the sounds of the 0.3 second beep-beep. Every evening, school children, factory workers and retirees clutching “the simplest optical instruments” came out onto the streets, climbed onto rooftops, stood on balconies and looked for that bright spot in the sky. Every issue of Pravda published detailed reports, reminiscent of wartime communiqués, of how many hundreds of thousands and then millions of kilometers Sputnik had traveled and from which points on the Earth it could be observed at what times. The flood of jubilant letters from scientists, workers, students, foreign politicians and journalists was never-ending. 

Naturally, official propaganda tried to squeeze everything it could out of this sensation. Venomous jabs at the Americans, who had failed where Soviet scientists succeeded, could be heard daily. In Pravda, a mysterious author hiding behind the penname “Observer” spitefully recounted what American newspapers were writing:

Certain parties within the U.S. are now saying, not without malice, that the typical swagger and conceit of some American politicians have led these braggarts to a rather sad result. [Furthermore,] having lost all sense of reality, Senator [Henry] Jackson went so far as to assert that the USSR’s creation of a satellite... should ‘intensify the Cold War.’ It’s hard not to think about the insightful Russian saying, ‘The wolf chokes on a bone, an enemy chokes on malice.’

Nevertheless, this was a rare case where official exultation coincided with the utterly sincere rejoicing of ordinary people. This was not a celebration of the 40th anniversary of some work by Lenin. People were truly excited and tried to see the little satellite, whose photograph was prominently featured in newspapers as if it were a movie star. Every day, professional and completely unprofessional poets wrote poems extolling its movement.

О первом спутнике земном

Мы думаем, как о живом.

Ведь он наш друг единственный

В холодной мгле таинственной!

Не трудно ли ему вдали 

Лететь в космической пыли?

А он беседует с Москвой, 

Сигналит бодро – «Я живой!

Немного холодно вокруг, 

Но завершил я новый круг, 

Отлично я лечу, друзья, 

И скорость не сбавляю.

Я счастлив, что не сказка я, 

А просто быль земная, 

Что я здесь первая звезда –

Частица вашего труда

О тайнах неба я впервой

С Землею говорю.

Ваш труд я возмещу с лихвой –

Пусть я потом сгорю!»

The only friend we have in space,

Our Sputnik is a special case.

To us, he’s very much alive,

The first in cosmic gloom to thrive.

So far away it really must

Be hard with only cosmic dust,

But Moscow hears him loud and clear

He signals boldly, “I’m still here!

It’s cold, but I can now repeat:

Another orbit is complete.

I’m flying great, my friends, today

My speed is good, I’m on my way.

I’m glad my story’s really true.

A tale of earth, I really do

Rejoice at being the first star

A part of what you’ve done so far, 

I’ll be the first to tell the earth

The mysteries of space, you’ll learn

A lot, I plan to show my worth,

Even if I have to burn!”

It is a rather silly little poem, but there is something touching and sincere about it – people really did think of Sputnik as a living thing. They followed its progress and worried about it, kept track of how many kilometers it had traveled, were upset when it ran out of electrical energy and its radio stopped transmitting signals, and felt grief when it began to fall from orbit, entered the Earth’s atmosphere and did, in the end, burn up. 

What is more, peoples’ emotions about Sputnik gave them a giddy feeling – onward into space! This was true joy, not exultation about yet another idiotic anniversary, not the pointless celebration of meaningless events, not false reports about overfulfilling the plan. For one thing, this was a joy that united all of humanity, on both sides of the iron curtain, and no amount of malice on the part of official observers could change that.

How many satellites are circling overhead today? The only time we think about them is when something breaks down and we cannot see a television broadcast, or a satellite phone stops working. These great great grandchildren of the little fellow launched in October 1957 can do a lot more than their forebear, and it is probably a good thing that we have become accustomed to them. But it is a bit sad that nowadays nobody wants to spend half the night clutching a pair of binoculars and searching out that bright point in the sky that somehow once made us so happy.