Space experts from around the world assembled in Hyderabad the southern
Indian city to look back 50 years to the launch of the first artificial
satellite and pay tribute to the pioneers of the space age.
The launch of Sputnik - 1 on October 4, 1957, by the Soviet Union amazed the
world, spurred the United States to set up NASA and triggered the Cold War
space race.
Half a centaury is an all-too-brief period in the history of the universe,
but looking back to the launch of Sputnik - 1 takes us "back to a period
that was completely different", said Australian space professional Peter
Jankowitsch, 74.
"The 1950s were a period of amazing paradoxes and contrasts, with challenges
that were simple and straight forwarded but sometimes also much more awe -
inspiring than the challenges of our era," he said.
"You had on the one hand the dangerous superpower rivalries, symbolized by
the cold war, with the specter of the annihilation of humankind by nuclear
war." Jankowitsch told the International Astronautics Congress.
"On the other hand, this was a period of great hope and optimism, belief in
the future, great advances in science and technology," he said at a special
session devoted to Sputnik-1.
The launch captured the imagination of the world, opening up for the first
the possibility of space travel, he said.
Few of those involved in Sputnik-1's launch, black and white television
images of which were shown to delegates here, are still alive.
Chief designer Sergei Korolev, widely regarded as the founder of the Soviet
space program, died in 1966 aged 66 and missile engineer Mikhail Kuzmich
Yangel passed away in 1971 aged 70.
A recorded interview with one of the surviving space pioneer and Korolev's
deputy, 96 years old rocket scientist Boris Chertok, was aired at the
Hyderabad space summit.
"Apparently I'm one of the few living witness," said Chertok, bald,
toothless but still sharp-looking and dressed in black suit.
He recalled: "At 22 hours, 28 minutes and 34 second Moscow time on October
4, 1957, the world could seen and artificial star that was created not by
gods but the hands of human beings."
Less than five minutes after lift-off from what is know the Baikonur
Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, the satellite was in orbit and "for the first time,
the earth escape velocity predicted by Newton was reached.
