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Post by gwiz on Oct 4, 2007 5:10:35 GMT -4
Today is the anniversary of the launch of the first artificial satellite. Sputnik was a 58 cm sphere with a mass of 83.6 kg, most of which was the batteries that powered the transmission of the famous beeps for more than three weeks. Far more impressive, though not announced by the Russians at the time, was that the empty rocket stage that also went into orbit massed well over seven tonnes.
This post is to show my respect for Korolev and his team - they did it first and they did it with style.
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Post by Czero 101 on Oct 4, 2007 10:42:31 GMT -4
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Post by gwiz on Oct 4, 2007 15:03:40 GMT -4
Just a couple of corrections to that piece: The Chertok interview isn't the scoop that it appears. He's written his memoirs and given plenty of other interviews. Laika, the dog on Sputnik 2, survived less than seven hours, not a week.
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Post by gwiz on Nov 3, 2007 6:20:35 GMT -4
A day to remember Laika and also the words of one of the scientists involved, Oleg Gazenko.
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Post by Count Zero on Nov 3, 2007 16:47:16 GMT -4
Yeah, as an experiment to see whether something could survive in space, the procedure seemed to make "no" a forgone conclusion.
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Post by gwiz on Feb 1, 2008 15:17:10 GMT -4
The 50th anniversary of the first successful US satellite launch today, Explorer 1 launched by Von Braun's Army Ballistic Missile Agency team with Van Allen's geiger counter and a couple of detectors for micrometeorites.
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Post by gwiz on Mar 17, 2008 15:10:44 GMT -4
50 years ago today the US Navy's Vanguard programme launched its first satellite, although at the third attempt. The 1.5 kg test satellite was the first to be solar powered, transmitting until 1964 and producing new data on atmospheric density and the shape of the earth. It is the oldest man-made object still in orbit.
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Post by gwiz on Apr 13, 2009 7:01:04 GMT -4
Today marks fifty years from the orbiting of the first purely military satellite, Discoverer 2. While the military were also responsible for earlier satellites, those were more scientific in purpose, but Discoverer 2 was intended to test systems for the Corona reconnaissance programme. In the event, it was the first satellite to achieve three-axis stabilisation and the first to attempt recovery of a capsule from orbit. The latter aim failed due to a timer problem that led to capsule re-entry being thousands of km off target.
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