Fifty years ago today, Sputnik-1 launched

“Sputnik was a watershed in history.... Curiously, in the Soviet Union of the time, it didn’t seem that big a deal, at least initially. The country’s leader Nikita Khrushchev was told of the successful launch while he was attending a meeting of party functionaries in Kiev. He was delighted, but the others only wanted to talk about the need to boost local electricity supplies. Only when pandemonium ensued in the US did Moscow realize the magnitude of its propaganda coup..”

NPR’s Gregory Feifer takes up the point that Sputnik’s designers didn’t fathom the impact the satellite would have outside of Russia. Andrew Chaikin, also at NPR, agrees and reminiscences over the influence Sputnik had over his own career. The BBC reports on the ceremonies being held in Russia to celebrate Sputnik. Sharon Begley at Newsweek points out that unlike the public, for policy makers the 1957 launch was not a big shock. Joel Achenbach at the Washington Post agrees and reminds us in 1957 that most of what we know about Russian space program was wrong , and some of the misinformation was partly spread by the US media. Brian Utley at the Technology Evangelist recounts the shock Sputnik caused and it led to Kennedy’s call in 1962 for the US to head to the moon.

Nature takes the anniversary as an opportunity to expand on a number of related issues in science. In How the mighty have fallen , Richard Garwin looks at the influence of the President’s Science Advisory Committee and what America lost when Nixon disbanded it in 1973. Alexei Kojevnikov argues in a piece entitled The little ball made science bigger, that science in the West is now much larger, and more multiracial and multicultural, is the most important - if unintended - consequence of Sputnik. William E. Burrows reviews Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age which point out that Mikhail Tikhonravov was behind the launch of Sputnik, not chief rocket designer Sergei Korolev who is usually more associated with the early days of the Russian space program. Martin Kemp on the otherhand, reflects on Laika, the first mammal to enter and lose their life in space one month after Sputnik-1 was launched through an appropriately entitled book review called A dog’s life while Giovanni F. Bignami, President of the Italian space agency, reviews The Fever of ’57 that looks at the social and political impact of Russia’s satellite. Former Russian science minister Boris G. Saltykov discusses the future of Russian science in Breaking up is hard to do .

Last week, Traci Watson at USA Today points out that Sputnik’s anniversary raises questions about future of space exploration . A theme that Paul Dickson continues in this week’s Kansas City newspaper. Scott LaFee in San Diego points out the long term influence Sputnik has on our everyday life, not because of the space race to the Moon, but because of the thousands of satellites that now obit the planet providing weather maps, travel updates, communications, and images of our changing environment. Seth Borenstein of Associated Press takes up the same point in the Washington Post .