Met half century since the USSR launched the first satellite of History was the first artificial satellite in history. Sputnik
1 was born with the space race, the intriguing odyssey to conquer a horizon which in 1957 was still uncharted territory, a whole "world" that man was playing for the first time, even with technology from his hands. With an approximate mass of 83 kilos, the ship had two radio transmitters and orbited the Earth at a distance of 900 kilometers. Sputnik 1, the "fellow traveler" then Soviet, was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Tyuratam (Kazakhstan) and was put into orbit a complex web of decisions as one would expect in an administration so bureaucratic and rigid as it was the Soviets. The father of the spacecraft was Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, a rocket scientist to suffer the arbitrary authoritarian regime "rewarding" their talent with years of gulag. Whatever the case, and after being restored by the regime, its contribution to the success of this mission (as in the later) was decisive. In fact, the "race" Soviet space plummeted to his death in 1964. Finally, it launched Sputnik 1 rocket R-7, Korolev whose revolutionary design by aviation technology of the time. The satellite was an aluminum sphere of fifty-eight inches in diameter that had four antennas from 2.4 to 2.9 meters in length. Obtained information on the density of the upper layers of the atmosphere and the propagation of radio waves in the ionosphere. For its part, the United States were also working on satellites of the same characteristics. Their first release was tried before Sputnik, but was delayed many times before being released. Here's how it began shooting on Jupiter Program of the U.S. Army successfully launched Explorer 1 on January 31, 1958. The space race, as the Cold War was entering its heyday, with permission from the dog Laika on Sputnik 2 in November 1957 and Gagarin, clear, and the first exit into space aboard the Vostok 1 in 1961 - and ended with the launch to the moon by Apollo 11, on 16 July 1969. Were chapters of the story, a frantic race to get real first step and put the flag. Projects like the International Space Station (Prince of Asturias prize precisely Cooperation) closed one day competition held Sputnik opened. Russia on Thursday celebrated the fiftieth. anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, the small and humble whose weak satellite radio signals caused a sensation in the world and marked the beginning of the space race between the two Cold War superpowers. "We were first," proudly proclaimed the Russian newspaper Izvestia had a headline on the cover. "At 22H28 (Moscow time) on 4 October 1957, humanity entered a new space age. The Soviet Union put into orbit the first artificial satellite," recalled veteran rotativo.Los Soviet space program laid flowers at the foot of the Kremlin wall where are buried the remains of Sergei Korolyov, the pioneer who led the project and discovered a Sputnik satellite memorial near Moscow. The Russian space agency Roskosmos giant screens installed around Moscow to remember the images of the historical epic, which at that time meant a great propaganda coup for the Soviet Union against the United States. Interestingly, the launch of Sputnik was not widely reported at first in the Soviet press of the time. In the West, however, made headlines in astonishment. The United States was taken by surprise. Barely two months later, in December 1957, launched its own satellite, a small device that caught fire was just released. The Sputnik satellite was a silver-colored with four antennas and two radio transmitters whose signals could be heard throughout the world. A feat that helped inspire generations of astronauts and scientists. The satellite was the first milestone of the Soviet space program, which initially won several high-profile successes, including sending the first human into space, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961, marking another setback for its rival. United States managed only retaliate by sending the first human mission to the moon in 1969, led by Neil Armstrong. As a symbol of a new era between the two countries, American and Russian space agencies signed Wednesday several agreements under which Russia will supply technology for missions that United States plans to send to the moon and Mars. The Russian space program suffered a major cut in funds after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 but has been revived thanks to public funding and international partnerships.