Former cosmonauts celebrate anniversary of Sputnik launch
Engineers, military officials and former cosmonauts today celebrated the 50th anniversary of the launch of the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik, which marked the dawn of the Space Age and sparked the race to land a man on the moon.
Ceremonies were held at Russia’s cosmonaut training centre, Star City, outside Moscow and engineers were to gather at the Academy of Sciences to recall the events leading up to the October 4 1957 launch of the spiky, 184lb metal ball that beeped as it circled the globe for some 22 days.
Military officials held a small ceremony to lay flowers at the grave of the father of the Soviet space program, Sergei Korolyov, who was buried with honours at the foot of the Kremlin walls.
The success of Soviet engineers in launching Sputnik stunned the world, and was followed just four years later by another historic achievement – the launch of Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space.
Sputnik galvanised the US government to pour money into space research and technology with the goal of landing a man on the moon – an event that occurred nearly 12 years later.
“Of course speaking just for us specialists (the launch) sparked an unexpected furore around the world. No one expected this, even including our engineers,” Viktor Frusmon, a co-worker of Korolyov’s, said in televised comments today.
