Sputnik

October 4th, is a special date in the world and society’s history. The reason this date’s special is because on this day, in 1537 the first translated English bible was released by Myles Coverdale (Jeffcoat, 2013). This sparked a revolution in Catholicism, people were able to read the bible and interpret the story of God for themselves. Exactly 420 years later in 1957 another transcending event for society occurred. The Soviet Union launched a small sphere of aluminum-magnesium-titanium alloy into space. The Soviets called it Sputnik, which is a Russian word for “Fellow Traveler” (Regan, 2002). This would go down as what we now consider the birth of satellite technology. It was an important time in human history looking back. Sputnik sparked the space race into full swing. The main two countries that participated in the space race were the Soviet Union and the United States. Mainly due to the fact that they had the biggest economies therefore they were able to …show more content…
The US military had already been using satellites to communicate internationally for five years before that ability was made public. They were using satellites that are classified as Geostationary, this is because they have a orbital period that is the same as the rotation rate of Earth. A Geostationary satellite is approximately 22,236 miles from the surface of Earth (Martin, 2007). Putting this into commercial use made it so towers did not have to track the satellite across the sky as it would appear to stand still when observed from Earth. This reason is the main reason why they are the most popular for use of television companies, telephone companies, and also provide important weather information. The commercial use of these satellites meant information could travel much faster. This made society as a whole communicate with each other