On October 4, 1957 the USSR launched the first artificial Earth satellite, called Sputnik 1. The rocket was manufactured as part of the Soviet space program by PAO S. P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, which was called OKB-1 at the time.

Sputnik 1 went into an elliptical low Earth orbit and remained there for three weeks before its batteries died. It then orbited silently for two months before falling back into Earth’s atmosphere on January 4th, 1958.