On October 4 the Soviet Union successfully put into orbit the world’s first man-made satellite, a 184-pound aluminum sphere named Sputnik, meaning “fellow traveler.” Moving at 18,000 miles per hour and orbiting the Earth every 96 minutes, the satellite carried a simple radio transmitter that emitted periodic beeps. “An eerie intermittent croak—it sounded like a cricket with a cold—was picked up by radio receivers around the world last week,” noted Life magazine. Not only was it audible; some Americans claimed they could see it in the night sky, a bright dot moving rapidly through the
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