Sputnik: 50 Years Later

"Sputnik was the enabler. It really got people thinking," said Alan Stern, NASA's associate administrator for science. "It sparked the Eisenhower administration, which in turn sparked the Kennedy administration, into a space race which has given us everything from the microelectronics revolution, to the discovery of the ozone hole and global change, to really understanding our place in the universe."

Scientific roots

Though the political ramifications of Sputnik's flight overshadowed its scientific value, the spacecraft's roots actually began at a high-profile international quest for knowledge about Earth.

In 1952, the International Council of Scientific Unions planned a series of coordinated observations and experiments to take place between July 1957 and Dec. 1958, under a program called the International Geophysical Year.

In addition to measurements at the polar caps, atmospheric research, oceanographic studies and solar observations, scientists decided to make use of rocket technology developed after World War II to try to put an artificial object into orbit.

"At the time, the International Geophysical Year was the largest collaborative scientific endeavor in history," said Scott Curtis, head of reference at the Linda Hall Library of Science, Technology and Engineering in Kansas City, Mo.

Few expected the Soviets to be first.

"It was a great political coup that the Soviets took advantage of to propagandize about the superiority of the worker state," said Curtis. "But it also had some scientific value in terms of studying radio signals and the ionosphere."

The real impact of Sputnik took weeks to manifest. Although mathematicians had proven decades earlier that artificial objects could be made to fly around Earth, most people had no understanding of the mechanics involved.