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First satellite seen from earth.
Storms had been photographed from space before but this was the first time a serious storm had been discovered from orbit.
Sputnik and the dawn of the space age.
Explorer 1 sent data back to earth for four months ceasing communications on may 23 1958.
The soviet union launched it into an elliptical low earth orbit on 4 october 1957.
It orbited for three weeks before its batteries died and then orbited silently for two months before.
The first satellite orbital photographs of earth were made on august 14 1959.
In september 1961 earth s best meteorologists got scooped on a major story.
Or 183 9 pounds and took about 98 minutes to orbit earth on its elliptical path.
In the context of spaceflight a satellite is an object that has been intentionally placed into orbit these objects are called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as earth s moon.
On 4 october 1957 the soviet union launched the world s first artificial satellite sputnik 1 since then about 8 900 satellites from more than 40 countries have been launched.
With an apogee of 65 miles 105 km these photos were from five times higher than the previous record the 13 7 miles 22 km by the explorer ii balloon mission in 1935.
The first images from space were taken on sub orbital flights the u s launched v 2 flight on october 24 1946 took one image every 1 5 seconds.
The world s first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball 58 cm or 22 8 inches in diameter weighed only 83 6 kg.
Zoom earth shows live weather satellite images updated in near real time and the best high resolution aerial views of the earth in a fast zoomable map.
Sputnik 1 ˈ s p ʊ t n ɪ k ˈ s p ʌ t n ɪ k.
History changed on october 4 1957 when the soviet union successfully launched sputnik i.
The satellite remained aloft for more than a decade before re entering earth s atmosphere on march 31 1970.