Abstract
Sputnik changed everything. Most of the great historical events of our time make an immediate impact that fades over time. Sputnik was different. When the first Earth satellite was launched, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev calmly took the call from Baikonour Cosmodrome, thanked Korolev courteously and went to bed. Pravda did report the launching the next day, but well down the page, blandly headed ‘Tass communiqué’. In the West, the British Broadcasting Corporation announced the launching at the end of its late news bulletin, a certain vocal hesitancy indicating that neither the station nor the announcer knew exactly what to make of this strange event.
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References
The person who has followed tracking issues concerning early Soviet lunar and inter-planetary probes is Grahn, Sven: Mission profiles of early Soviet lunar probes; Why the west did not believe in Luna 1; Luna 3-the first view of the moon’s far side; Soviet/Russian OKIK ground station sites; The Soviet/Russian deep space network; Jodrell Bank’s role in early space tracking; Yevpatoria-as the US saw it in the 60s at http://www.users.wineasy.se/svengrahn/histind
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Shevchenko, V.V.: Mare Moskvi. Science and Life, vol. 3, #88.
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© 2007 Praxis Publishing Ltd, Chichester, UK
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(2007). The first moon probes. In: Soviet and Russian Lunar Exploration. Springer Praxis Books. Praxis. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-73976-2_2
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