Happy Birthday, Space Age!

[mckitterick]

My last post mentions that World Space Week begins today. Why today? Well, it's been 50 years since the start of the Space Age, launched with a little basket-ball sized satellite that beeped as it orbited the world on this day in 1957. Getting ready to launch, Sputnik looked like this:


Here's a photo of one of Sputnik's unlaunched siblings:


And here's the news story that launched NASA and ultimately the American race for the Moon:

Click the image to read the original NYT story.

Thank you, little Sputnik, for giving us the Space Age.

EDIT: Today is also the third anniversary of the second flight of SpaceShipOne, which garnered it the Ansari X Prize (thanks to shsilver for the reminder!). I love that they scheduled their winning lauch on Sputnik's anniversary!

SpaceShipOne is the white craft in the foreground; The Spirit of St. Louis is what used to make the first trans-Atlantic flight, and the orange craft is Chuck Yeager's "Glamorous Glennis" Bell X-1 rocket-plane, which he flew past the sound barrier for the first time in history on October 14, 1947 at an altitude of 45,000 feet.

Chris