And we can say that today is the celebration of 57 years of the first electronic and artificial instrument made by man and placed in orbit, this equipment is Sputnik 1.
Sputnik, which means nothing more than satellite in Russian, and was created by Russians, is widely identified in the world for its spherical shape made of metal and which measures 58 cm, its weight is 83 kg just to carry simple equipment that is nothing more than a radio transmitter and 4 antennas and that emitted the characteristic beep at the super low frequencies of 20,005 and 40,002 MHz.
Despite this enormous simplicity, he even managed to carry out some experiments that had never been carried out in space before, either because of technology or because nothing man-made had yet been placed in orbit. The Russians had the opportunity to learn about radio frequency diffusion in the ionosphere, which is perhaps why they used such a long wavelength radio band. In addition, it was possible to measure the density of the "air" through the deterioration of the satellite's orbit and even calculate precisely the orbit of a body around the earth using these data obtained.
Its nitrogen-pressurized interior had 3 batteries in it plus the radio transmitter, two of these batteries were responsible for powering the radio transmitter and one for heating and cooling the interior, in total it was expected to last 22 days, this system alone weighed 51 kg in all, leaving the transmitter and its systems to weigh 3 and a half kilos.
It may seem a little complicated to assimilate a totally simple satellite with several experiments, the beep at the frequency of 20Mhz lasted 0,3 seconds, thus making it possible to analyze the reflection of waves in the ionosphere through the time that the signal took to reach the base on earth , in addition, the 40Mhz frequency helped calculate its orbit through the distance the signal took to reach Earth.
Internally, Sputnik 1 had a system in which it was pressurized with nitrogen and according to which meteorites were piercing its fuselage, the pressure dropped, an internal instrument was responsible for changing the beep when the pressure was less than a predetermined value.
With the radio waves it was possible to calculate the orbits of the satellite, thus finding a low orbit of 215 km and a high orbit of 939 km, lasting approximately 96 minutes at a speed of 29 km/h. Its total orbit time was 3 months until it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and burned completely, in that time it was around the Earth it traveled 70 million kilometers around the Earth.
