[13] On 17 December 1954, chief Soviet rocket scientist Sergei Korolev proposed a developmental plan for an artificial satellite to the Minister of the Defense Industry, Dimitri Ustinov.

[15] On 29 July 1955, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced through his press secretary that, during the International Geophysical Year (IGY), the United States would launch an artificial satellite.

[17] On 30 August, Vasily Ryabikov—the head of the State Commission on the R-7 rocket test launches—held a meeting where Korolev presented calculation data for a spaceflight trajectory to the Moon.

These included measuring the density of the atmosphere and its ion composition, the solar wind, magnetic fields, and cosmic rays.

[34] An electrical short caused the vernier engines to put the missile into an uncontrolled roll which resulted in all of the strap-ons separating 33 seconds into the launch.

The launch of the fifth R-7 rocket (8K71 No.9), on 7 September,[34] was also successful, but the dummy was also destroyed on atmospheric re-entry,[36] and hence needed a redesign to completely fulfill its military purpose.

[41] Compared to the military R-7 test vehicles, the mass of 8K71PS was reduced from 280 to 272 tonnes (617,000 to 600,000 lb), its length with PS-1 was 29.167 metres (95 ft 8.3 in) and the thrust at liftoff was 3.90 MN (880,000 lbf).

Called the Command-Measurement Complex, it consisted of the coordination center in NII-4 and seven distant stations situated along the line of the satellite's ground track.

[44] These tracking stations were located at Tyuratam, Sary-Shagan, Yeniseysk, Klyuchi, Yelizovo, Makat in Guryev Oblast, and Ishkup in Krasnoyarsk Krai.

[45] The observatories used a trajectory measurement system called "Tral", developed by OKB MEI (Moscow Energy Institute), by which they received and monitored data from transponders mounted on the R-7 rocket's core stage.

[56] It consisted of three silver-zinc batteries, developed at the All-Union Research Institute of Power Sources (VNIIT) under the leadership of Nikolai S. Lidorenko.

[57] The satellite had a one-watt, 3.5 kg (7.7 lb)[38] radio transmitting unit inside, developed by Vyacheslav I. Lappo from NII-885, the Moscow Electronics Research Institute,[57][58] that worked on two frequencies, 20.005 and 40.002 MHz.

[64] A fuel regulator in the booster also failed around 16 seconds into launch, which resulted in excessive RP-1 consumption for most of the powered flight and the engine thrust being 4% above nominal.

[66] They waited about 90 minutes to ensure that the satellite had made one orbit and was transmitting before Korolev called Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.

[67] On the first orbit the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) transmitted: "As result of great, intense work of scientific institutes and design bureaus the first artificial Earth satellite has been built".

[3] Organized through the citizen science project Operation Moonwatch, teams of visual observers at 150 stations in the United States and other countries were alerted during the night to watch for the satellite at dawn and during the evening twilight as it passed overhead.

[71] News reports at the time pointed out that "anyone possessing a short wave receiver can hear the new Russian earth satellite as it hurtles over this area of the globe.

[76] The USSR's launch of Sputnik 1 spurred the United States to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, later DARPA) in February 1958 to regain a technological lead.

[80] However, when the USSR launched Sputnik 2, containing the dog Laika, the media narrative returned to one of anti-Communism and many people sent protests to the Soviet embassy and the RSPCA.

[85] Privately, however, the CIA and President Eisenhower were aware of progress being made by the Soviets on Sputnik from secret spy plane imagery.

The Americans took a more aggressive stance in the emerging space race,[87] resulting in an emphasis on science and technological research, and reforms in many areas from the military to education systems.

[85] These research groups developed weapons such as ICBMs and missile defense systems, as well as spy satellites for the U.S.[85] Initially, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower was not surprised by Sputnik 1.

[94] Eisenhower had suffered the Soviet protests and shoot-downs of Project Genetrix (Moby Dick) balloons[95] and was concerned about the probability of a U-2 being shot down.

With a sense of urgency, Congress enacted the 1958 National Defense Education Act, which provided low-interest loans for college tuition to students majoring in mathematics and science.

[104][105] After the launch of Sputnik, a poll conducted and published by the University of Michigan showed that 26% of Americans surveyed thought that Russian sciences and engineering were superior to that of the United States.

[109] Astronauts Alan Shepard (who was the first American in space) and Deke Slayton later wrote of how the sight of Sputnik 1 passing overhead inspired them to their new careers.

[111][112] The American writer Herb Caen was inspired to coin the term "beatnik" in an article about the Beat Generation in the San Francisco Chronicle on 2 April 1958.

Two American physicists, William Guier and George Weiffenbach, at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) decided to monitor Sputnik's radio transmissions[116] and within hours realized that, because of the Doppler effect, they could pinpoint where the satellite was along its orbit.

Early the next year, Frank McClure, the deputy director of the APL, asked Guier and Weiffenbach to investigate the inverse problem: pinpointing the user's location, given the satellite's.

[120] The Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington has a Sputnik 1, but it has no internal components, though it does have casings and molded fittings inside (as well as evidence of battery wear), which may be an engineering model.