Latest Sputnik program Stories

BIEL/BIENNE, Switzerland and LONDON, March 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The Swiss inverter manufacturer Sputnik Engineering presents its new SolarMax MT2 string inverters at ecobuild 2012 An international audience will meet at ecobuild London from March 20-22 to learn about trends and solutions in sustainable design, construction and the building environment. Swiss inverter specialist SolarMax will present its new MT2 string inverters as well as the existing portfolio of...

Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States when it was sent into space on January 31, 1958. Following the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency was directed to launch a satellite using its Jupiter C rocket developed under the direction of Dr. Wernher von Braun. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory received the assignment to design, build and operate the artificial satellite that would serve as the rocket's payload. JPL...

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV MOSCOW - Just a month after the Soviet Union stunned the world by putting the first artificial satellite into orbit, it boasted a new victory - a much bigger satellite carrying a mongrel dog called Laika. The mission, 50 years ago Saturday, ended sadly for Laika but helped pave the way for human flight. Nowadays Russia launches rats, fish and other small species for experiments. But larger animals like dogs and monkeys are no longer sent into space. As with other...

"Beep"¦ beep"¦ beep...." That's the sound that marked the beginning of the Space Age fifty years ago. It was a simple radio tone transmitted by the first satellite, Sputnik 1, as it orbited Earth in October 1957.Since then communication with spacecraft has advanced tremendously. Yet a modern probe on the way to the edge of the solar system is using Sputnik-like tones to send messages back to Earth.Why the retro technology? It solves a modern problem: multiplication. Sputnik has so...

By Mike Mullane Tonight, I will sit in my backyard spa and look into the evening twilight and count the passing satellites. In the clear, dry New Mexican sky they're easy to see. Just as the setting sun lingers on the tallest mountain peak, satellites that are hundreds of miles high continue to reflect sunlight long after the Earth beneath them has darkened. Most evenings I'll observe at least a half-dozen of the little "moons," but it wouldn't be remarkable to count 10 or more. As...

To say the least, it was incredible. The news relayed by the voice on the other end of the phone line hit the president of the San Gabriel Valley Radio Club like a blow to the head. Too incredible, Henry Richter hoped, to be true. Hope was something Richter knew quite well. It went with the job. Not only as president of a local ham radio club; although you always hoped the guy on the other side of the world talking to you over the shortwave would have something interesting to say. No,...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - American physicist James Van Allen, who helped propel the United States into the space race and discovered the bands of radiation that surround the Earth that were later named for him, died on Wednesday, the University of Iowa said.Van Allen, a longtime professor at the university, died from undisclosed causes. He was 91.He designed numerous instruments carried aboard U.S. space probes beginning with the instrumentation and Geiger counters aboard Explorer 1. The satellite...