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Article: 1957 Sputnik launches the space race: at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union sent the first satellite into space. A stunned America reacted by jump-starting its space program, leading to the historic moon landing 12 years later.(TIMES PAST)
- Article from:
- New York Times Upfront
- Article date:
- September 17, 2007
- Author:
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It weighed 184 pounds and was about as big as a basketball. But as historian Daniel J. Boorstin would later write, "Never before had so small and so harmless an object created such consternation."
The object was Sputnik, a small aluminum sphere with spiky antennas, and the first artificial satellite sent into orbit around Earth.
It was launched 50 years ago, on Oct. 4, 1957, by the Soviet Union, shocking the United States at the height of the Cold War and triggering a "space race" with the Soviets, little more than half a century after the first airplane flight.
Sputnik was the space shot heard around the world. ...