Space Age’ is 50 years old

Bangalore: Fifty years ago this week — on October 4, 1957, to be exact — a 100-tonne rocket blasted off from the steppes of Kazakhstan, then a part of the Soviet Union, and placed in orbit the first artificial satellite to girdle the globe. It weighed 83 kg, was roughly the size of a basketball and its beeps, as it circled the planet every 98 minutes, signalled the dawn of the Space Age.
Coming as it did, at the height of the Cold War, it also triggered off what was to be become a bitterly fought Space Race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, that ended only when the Soviet Union itself broke up, leading the new Russia as well as the U.S. to join hands with other nations to create an International Station.
The frenzy set off by that first satellite launch — and the desperate attempts of the U.S. to play “catch up” — led famed British novelist and disarmament advocate J.B. Priestley to deride the satellites as so many “tin footballs” knocking around in Space, as part of a disease he called “satellitis.”
But the Soviet Union was to launch a second Sputnik, this time carrying a dog, Laika (which sadly did not survive) before the Americans put their own first satellite — Explorer 1 — in orbit on January 31, 1958. The Soviets continued to lead in the Space Race with the first human in Space — Yuri Gagarin — in April 1961; and the first woman — Valentina Tereshkova — in June 1963. The U.S. had to wait till July 20, 1969, to edge past the Soviet Union, when Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon.
Only weeks later that same year on Independence Day, the Indian Space Research Organisation was set up, launching an ambitious programme that has remained rooted in a peaceful and bold mandate to exploit the technology of satellites and Space for earthy benefit.
When Arthur Clarke, the writer whose work first predicted many of the achievements of Man in Space, was asked in 1999, to look forward to 2057, the 100th anniversary of the first Sputnik, he said the centenary would be celebrated by humans on Earth, the Moon and Mars — and in orbit around Venus, Neptune and Pluto.
Half way down that road, such a prediction looks rather optimistic; but the fact remains that recent months have seen a renewed global interest in a renewed Moon mission as well as fresh explorations of Mars.