4 October 1957: At 19:28:34 UTC, the world’s first artificial satellite, Простейший Спутник-1 (Sputnik 1, or Elementary Satellite 1) was launched from Tyuratam, Kazakh S.S.R. (now, the Baikonur Cosmodrome) aboard a two-stage Sputnik 8K71PS rocket, a variant of the R-7 Semyorka intercontinental ballistic missile. The satellite entered an elliptical orbit, circling Earth every 96.2 minutes.
Sputnik 1 launched at 22:28:34 Moscow time. After 116.38 seconds, the first and second stages separated. The second stage and satellite entered orbit 295.4 seconds after liftoff at an altitude of 228.6 kilometers (142.05 miles) and velocity of 7,780 meters per second (17,403.36 miles per hour). The satellite separated from the second stage 5 minutes, 14.5 seconds after launch.
The second stage reentered the atmosphere 2 December 1957. Sputnik made 1,440 orbits before it reentered the atmosphere, 4 January 1958.
The satellite was designed at OKB-1 (the Special Design Bureau) by a team of Mikhail Stepanovich Khomyakov, Maksim Khramov and Oleg Genrikhovich Ivanovsky. It was constructed as a sphere with a diameter of 58.0 centimeters (22.84 inches), made from an aluminum alloy with a thickness of 2 millimeters (0.08 inch). The two halves were joined by 36 bolts and filled with pressurized nitrogen. Four “whip” antennas were equally spaced around the satellite’s shell, angled at 35° from the longitudinal axis. With three silver-zinc batteries and equipment, the Sputnik 1 mass was 83.6 kilograms (184.3 pounds).
The satellite entered an elliptical orbit, with a perigee of 215.0 kilometers (133.6 miles) and apogee of 939.0 kilometers (583.5 miles). The duration of each orbit was 1 hour, 36 minutes, 12 seconds.
The Sputnik 8K71PS launch vehicle, serial number 1 M1-PS, was a two-stage, liquid-fueled rocket based on the R-7 Semyorka intercontinental ballistic missile. The R-7 rocket was designed by Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, known as The Chief Designer. It had a length of 29.167 meters (95.69 feet) and maximum diameter of 10.3 meters (33.79 feet) at the base, including stabilizers. Its mass was 267.13 tons (588,921 pounds) at liftoff. The propellant was Kerosene T-1 with liquid oxygen.
The first stage consisted of four “strap-on” boosters surrounding the second, or “core” stage, each with an RD-107 four-chamber rocket engine, for a total thrust of 323.6 tons (713,409 pounds) of thrust. The first stage burn time was 120 seconds.
The second stage (core) was powered by one RD-108 four-chamber engine, producing 93 tons (205,028 pounds) of thrust. Burn time for the second stage was 180 seconds.
© 2019, Bryan R. Swopes
Sputnik gets credit for launching “the Space Race” and most people think “Apollo,” but it also triggered a longer-lasting revolutionary technology as well.
Scientists at John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory found they could track the position of Sputnik using the Doppler Effect of its beacon signal. They further realized that if the knew the position of the satellite they could use the same effect to determine their ground position. This was the genesis of navigation by satellite. ARPA let a research contract the next year that resulted in the US Navy’s Transit, the first satellite navigation system. Further efforts were made with the Navy’s Timation and the Air Force’s Project 621B. Knowledge from all three programs was combined by the Air Force into the design of the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System in 1972.
This Aerospace article gives a top level history of this:
https://aerospace.org/article/brief-history-gps