The Sputnik legacy

Humanity's race for the final frontier across decades

3 min read

Updated On: Nov 10 2026 | 5:35 AM IST

An exploded view of Sputnik 1 (PHOTO: NASA)

On October 4, 1957, a polished metal sphere, barely 58 centimetres across and fitted with four slender antennas, cut into the skies and changed humanity’s relationship with the universe forever. Launched by the Soviet Union, this small wonder became the world’s first artificial satellite, announcing its presence through signals that could be picked up by radio enthusiasts on Earth.

Named Sputnik 1, Russian for “satellite” and also for “fellow traveller”, it circled Earth every 96.20 minutes at about 8 kilometres per second — that’s roughly eight times the speed at which the Moon orbits Earth. Though its batteries lasted just three weeks, the radio signals it sent to Earth ushered in the Space Age and also ignited an intense contest, the Space Race, between two Cold War superpowers — the Soviet Union and the United States (US).

Barely a month later, on November 3, the Soviets achieved another milestone by blasting off Sputnik 2 into orbit. This time, the satellite had a passenger: Laika, a small dog picked up from the streets of Moscow. Placed in a little cabin inside the satellite, with food, oxygen and equipment to monitor its vitals, Laika became the first animal to orbit Earth.

Though the mission sought to find out whether a living being could withstand the stress of launch and survive in space, it was known from the very onset that this would be a one-way journey for Laika. Sputnik 2 had no mechanism to bring the dog home. It died within hours of the launch from overheating, though the actual reason for the death was revealed to the world only decades later. The mission, however, offered valuable biological data, paving the way for further experiments.

In August 1960, two Soviet dogs, Belka and Strelka, were sent to space aboard Korabl-Sputnik 2. They completed 17 orbits and returned safely to Earth, becoming the first animals to survive an orbital journey. These pioneering missions paved the way for Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin to become the first human in space on April 12, 1961.

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The Americans, determined to reclaim technological supremacy, accelerated their own space programme, culminating in Neil Armstrong’s historic first steps on the Moon on July 20, 1969.

The rockets carrying the satellites, dogs and eventually humans into space shared their technological ancestry with the ballistic missile built by Nazi Germany during World War II. Space exploration wasn’t quite divorced from military ambitions. Other nations also got down to engaging with space. India launched its first satellite, Aryabhata, in 1975, followed by Rakesh Sharma’s historic spaceflight aboard Soviet Soyuz T-11 spacecraft on April 3, 1984.

Decades later, in August 2023, the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Chandrayaan-3 achieved a historic landing near the Moon’s south pole, and in 2025, Shubhanshu Shukla became the second Indian citizen in space.

Across the globe, in the US, President Donald Trump established the US Space Force in 2019.

This was also the year, India demonstrated its anti-satellite capability through Mission Shakti. Just recently, the US confirmed it had deployed space weapons under the Golden Dome missile-defence initiative. Sputnik’s legacy has clearly acquired a deeper strategic dimension.

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Written By :

Veenu Sandhu

Veenu Sandhu is the Resident Editor at Business Standard. Based in New Delhi, she has been a journalist since 1996 and has worked in some of India's leading newsrooms across print, digital and television media, including NDTV 24x7, Hindustan Times and The Indian Express. At Business Standard, she writes, commissions, edits, and gives direction to special, in-depth articles for the newspaper and the digital platform across beats and sectors. She also hosts video shows for Business Standard. Before this, she edited BS Weekend. She is a 2017-18 batch Chevening South Asia Journalism fellow.