September 17, 2007. Copyright, 2007, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Five decades of space flight

LONDON, September 17, Graphic News: Fifty years ago Sergei Korolev, founder of the Soviet space programme, launched the rocket that put 83.6kg (184lbs) of metal and electronics into orbit. 

On that cold night on October 4, 1957, super-secretive Korolev also launched a new phase of the Cold War. TheÒbleep-bleepÓ sent by Sputnik-1 as it encircled the globe also contained a message for the worldÕs leaders: the R-7 rocket launcher that hoisted Sputnik into orbit could also deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere in Europe. The race to build missiles drove the race into space.

The first man-made object in orbit was an aluminium sphere 58cm (23 inches) across, filled with pressurized nitrogen and carrying two small transmitters that beamed wavering radio signals to the world below.

After 22 days its batteries ran flat and Sputnik fell silent. A few weeks later, after 1,440 orbits, it vaporized as it re-entered the EarthÕs atmosphere.

In the five decades since Sputnik-1, more than 6,000 other craft have blasted into space. Small satellites carrying transmitters were soon followed by larger ones carrying animals. Within four years Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth and within a mere dozen years, mankind left its footprints in the dust of the moon.

Sputnik-1 led to a cascade of technological marvels, computer science, pinpoint satellite navigation, instant global communication, space-based telescopes above our polluted atmosphere, and even non-stick frying pans.

Missions such as the Mariners and the Vikings took us to the planets. Voyager, a robotic space probe launched three decades ago, continues to beam back data from the edge of the solar system some 15.4 billion km (9.6 billion miles) away.

Today, with the Cold War over and the International Space Station making cooperation with Russia an everyday event, we are making bold plans again. Google and the X PRIZE Foundation are co-sponsoring a $30 million prize for the first private company that lands a roving space craft on the moon capable of transmitting high-resolution images and video back to Earth. The U.S., China, India and Japan are all planning manned-lunar bases by 2020, Hilton envisage a 5,000-room lunar hotel and, ultimately, there is NASAÕs long haul to plant boots on the Red Planet. 
/ENDS