There have been many milestones of note in the story of the Space Age, but the launch of the USSR’s Sputnik 1 satellite is the major breakthrough that started it all. It was the first human-made object to get up into space and stay in orbit, having blasted off on October 4, 1957, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in current-day Kazakhstan. It was a technological leap that no one outside the Soviet Union expected, including the U.S.
The rush of rapid political, military, and scientific developments that followed—up to and beyond the 1969 moon landing—can all be traced back to this 23-inch-diameter metal sphere. Read more: “The First Person to Get Hit by Space Junk” The satellite beamed back radio signals from space for 22 days, before its three silver-zinc batteries ran out and it crashed into the atmosphere on January 4, 1958. Several more Sputniks followed, as well as seven decades of space exploration that’s still ongoing.
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