Sergei Korolyov was the Chief Architect of Soviet space programs. His sudden death in 1966, dampened Soviet dreams to land first on the moon.
The Cold war took a new dimension when the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, the Sputnik 1 on October 4th, 1957. For a nation recovering from a devastating war, it was great news. The United States had believed itself to be the world leader in space technology and thus the leader in missile development. The surprise Sputnik launch and the failure of the first two U.S. launch attempts proved otherwise.
A photo of the R-7 ICBM similar to the one used for Sputnik launch.
Has the Soviet education surpassed the rest of the world? What did the “commies” do? The Soviet Union stunned the world by launching Sputnik. This could be due to the fact that education was free in the USSR. It was compulsory and child labor was strictly prohibited. Moreover, women were given equal opportunity. No wonder the first woman to be in space was a Soviet, Valentina Tereshkowa.
Sputnik on the launchpad before launch.
The control system of the Sputnik Rocket was tuned to provide an orbit with the following parameters: perigee height - 223 km, apogee height - 1450 km, orbital period - 101.5 min. The chief constructor of Sputnik 1 was M.S.Khomyakov. The satellite carried two antennas designed by the Antenna Laboratory of OKB-1 led by M.V.Krayushkin. Each antenna was made up of two whip-like parts: 2.4 and 2.9 meters in length and had an almost spherical radiation pattern, so that the satellite beeps were transmitted with equal power in all directions, making reception of the transmitted signal independent of the satellite's rotation. The whip-like pairs of antennas resembled four long "whiskers" pointing to one side, at equal 35 degrees angles with the longitudinal axis of the satellite.
Sputnik 1 launched using R-7 ICBM.
The satellite had one-watt supply and it used zinc-silver batteries. The satellite sent signals at 20.005 and 40.002MHz with pulse duration of 0.3 seconds under normal pressure and temperature conditions. Analysis of the radio signals was used to gather information about the electron density of the ionosphere. Temperature and pressure were encoded in the duration of radio beeps, which additionally indicated that the satellite had not been punctured by a meteorite. If the temperature inside the satellite exceeded 36 °C the fan was turned on and when it fell below 20 °C the dual thermal switch turned off the fan. If the temperature exceeded 50 °C or fell below 0 °C, another control thermal switch was activated, changing the duration of the of radio signal pulses. Sputnik 1 was filled with dry nitrogen, pressurized to 1.3 atmospheres. For the pressure control the satellite had a barometric switch, activated when the pressure inside the satellite fell below 0.35 kg/cm² (approx 0.34 atmospheres), changing the duration of radio signal impulse.
Sputnik 1 Image.
The designers, engineers and technicians who developed the rocket and satellite watched the launch from the range. After the launch they ran to the mobile radio station to listen to signals from the satellite. They waited about 90 minutes to ensure that the satellite had made one orbit and was transmitting, before Korolyov called Khrushchev, the then General Secretary of the Soviet Union.
Newspapers published in USA. Amateur radio operators having short wave receivers received the signals from Sputnik as it orbitted the earth.
As United States continued propaganda projecting the USSR as an evil empire, the Soviets continued to discover new things. The signal received from outer space was heard as “beep-beep”. Amateur radio operators having short wave receiver tuned the sets to 20 Mega hertz cycles to hear the Sputnik’s beep. The Sputnik’s beep was an intercontinental outer space raspberry to a decade of American pretensions that the American way of life was a gilt-edged guarantee of national superiority.
-To be continued.
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