The Sputnik Anniversary Quiz: Test Your Space Race Knowledge

Sixty-nine years ago today, the Soviet Union put a polished metal ball into the sky and the whole world held its breath to listen. Sputnik 1 went up on October 4, 1957, and the beep-beep it sent down, picked up by amateur radio operators around the planet according to EDN's account of the launch, was the first artificial sound ever broadcast from orbit. Take this Sputnik anniversary quiz and see how much of that story you actually remember.

The satellite was tiny by today's standards, about the size of a beach ball, but its arrival rattled Washington. A shaken United States answered with NASA, a surge of science funding, and a race to the Moon. Every question in this Sputnik anniversary quiz comes from space-history accounts you can check for yourself, including Astronomy magazine, EDN, Vintage Aviation News, and Space.com. Six questions, no trick answers, and the solutions sit at the bottom.

Six questions in this Sputnik anniversary quiz

Question one: the name itself. What does the Russian word "Sputnik" actually mean? Space.com gives the word's meaning as "traveling companion," and Physics World renders it as "fellow traveller of Earth," so this Sputnik anniversary quiz will accept either answer.

Question two: how big was it? EDN reported that Sputnik 1 was a fifty-eight-centimeter sphere assembled from two sealed hemispheres, about twenty-three inches across, weighing eighty-three point six kilograms, which works out to roughly one hundred eighty-four pounds. EDN also noted that the sphere wore a one-millimeter heat shield of aluminum, magnesium, and titanium, polished so brightly that telescopes on the ground could catch its glint.

Question three: what did the world hear from it, and for how long? The satellite carried a radio transmitter that sent its famous beep-beep on frequencies around twenty and forty megahertz, and EDN reported that its silver-zinc batteries kept the signal alive for twenty-two days, until October 26, 1957.

Question four: how fast was it going? Vintage Aviation News reported that Sputnik 1 circled the Earth about every ninety-six minutes at roughly twenty-nine thousand kilometers an hour, and you can read the full day-by-day account in their aviation-history writeup.

Question five: what carried it to orbit? The launcher was a two-stage Sputnik 8K71PS rocket, derived from the R-7 Semyorka intercontinental ballistic missile, according to Vintage Aviation News. The same R-7 family, with upgrades, still flies today as the Soyuz launcher.

Question six: what did the United States do about it? Astronomy magazine noted that a shaken America did not launch its first satellite, Explorer 1, until January of the following year, and the shock spurred the creation of NASA in 1958. Their anniversary feature walks through the whole timeline.

The answers

Here are the answers to the Sputnik anniversary quiz, one through six. One: "traveling companion" or "fellow traveler." Two: fifty-eight centimeters across, about twenty-three inches, weighing eighty-three point six kilograms. Three: a beep-beep radio signal that lasted twenty-two days. Four: about ninety-six minutes per orbit. Five: a modified R-7 Semyorka intercontinental ballistic missile. Six: it created NASA and launched Explorer 1, both in nineteen fifty-eight.

Sputnik 1 did not survive the year. EDN reported that it burned up during reentry on January 4, 1958, after about three months in orbit, roughly fourteen hundred trips around the planet, and a journey of some sixty million kilometers. The sphere is gone, but the signal behind this Sputnik anniversary quiz still echoes: every satellite overhead, every rocket launch you watch on a stream, every space photo on your feed traces back to that beeping beach ball. For more cosmic history, read our piece on the real space history behind Pokémon GO's Astronaut Pikachu and the giant lunar crater NASA recently mapped.

How did you do on this Sputnik anniversary quiz? Five or six right and you know your Space Race cold. Three or four and you are respectably informed. Fewer than that, and honestly, you now know the six best facts to drop the next time a rocket goes up and everyone is watching.