Aku inget!

Waktu aku ngeberesin tumpukan buku di kamarku (udah slese ujian nih….) aku liat gambar astronot di buku bahasa inggrisku. Aku tiba-tiba aja inget, beberapa bulan yang lalu ada salah satu temenku yang bertanya macem-macem tentang satelit, vostok, NASA, etc…..
Buwat diya yang ngrasa pernah tanya gitu ke aku, silahkan baca……

SPUTNIK
Sputnik is the name of the first of several artificial satellites launched by the Soviet Union from 1957 to 1961. The goals of the Sputnik program included studying the earth’s upper atmosphere, observing animal survival in space flight, and testing Soviet rocket technology. The launch of the unmanned Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2, which carried a dog, spurred the United States to incest more money and recources into its young space programme, initialing a race between the two nations to land a person on moon.
The Sputnik program began on October 4, 1957, with the launch of Sputnik 1, which weighed 83 kg. The official name of the satellite was Iskusvennyi Sputnik Zemli (fellow world traveler of earth). The launch vehicle was a test version of the Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile. Sputnik 2 was launch on November 3, 1957, and weighed 508 kg. It carried a female dog named Laika. On board instruments showed that Laika survived in space for several days until her oxygen supply was exhausted.
After failing in its first attempt, the United States launched its own satellite, Explorer 1, on January 31, 1958. The satellite weighed only 14 kg, including its rocket motor. The Soviet responded by launching Sputnik 3, which weighed 1.3 metric tons, on May 15, 1958.
The first three Sputnik satellites each instrument to measure the temperature and the density of the earth’s upper atmosphere, the electron density of the ionosphere, and the size and number of micrometeorites (tiny partikel in space). In addition, Sputnik 3 carried the first space laboratory, a set of inctrument that could transmit information about the environment outside the satellite. Solar energy was used for the first time by Sputnik 3 to power its instruments and transmitters.
From 1958 to 1959 the Soviet Union interrupted the Sputnik program to concentrate on the Luna series of vehicles that were sent toward the moon. The sputnik program was resumed with Sputniks 5 through 10, which were launched from 1960 to 1961. Sputniks 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 all carried dogs, most of which reenterd the earth’s atmosphere safely and were recovered. These satellites each weighed several thousand kilograms and became the models of the vostok spacescraft, which would eventually carry the first human passenger, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, into space in April 1961.
In addition, to initialing the space race between the United States and Soviet Union, the Sputnik series of spacecraft also had alarming military implications. The intercontinental ballistic missiles that were used to launch the Sputnik satellites were also capable of travelling from the Soviet Union to military targets in less than an hour-much less than the several hours required from conventional bommer aircraft. President Dwight D. Eisenhower of the United States reacted to the space race by signing the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, which created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He also established the Advenced Reseach Project Agency (now the Defense Advanced Reseach Project Agency), a division of the U.S.Department of Defense.