Its tinny beep signalled the dawn of the space age and changed the world as Sputnik circled the Earth in a scientific triumph for the Soviet Union. But while the launch of the first man-made satellite amazed and frightened the West, it went virtually unnoticed at home. Far from trumpeting a propaganda victory, the Kremlin barely mentioned Sputnik’s success on October 4, 1957, until it became aware of the reaction in the United States, its Cold War adversary.

Now a resurgent Russia, flush with cash from booming energy prices, is determined to reclaim the lead in space as it marks Sputnik’s 50th anniversary. It has announced plans to send men to the Moon by 2025 and plans to land a probe on Mars in a joint project with China in 2009.

Roskosmos, the Russian space agency, is to build a new launch base by 2020 as an alternative to the Soviet-era Baikonur cosmodrome it rents from Kazakhstan. President Putin has also authorised big increases in state spending to restore national pride in Russia’s achievements.

The launch of Sputnik stunned the world, but the Kremlin was slow to realise its achievement. Pravda carried only a brief report while US newspapers splashed the story across their front pages as “Sputnik shock” gripped the country.

“Neither we nor our media first grasped the historical significance of our feat,” said Boris Chertok, one of the scientists who worked on the project. “We believed this would mainly interest us scientists and our students.” When Moscow finally caught up, President Khrushchev demanded a second satellite launch in time for the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution on November 7.

Sputnik 2 was launched on November 3, and carried a dog named Laika. She was the world’s first animal in space, though it later emerged that she died soon after lift-off, with Britain complaining to the Soviet authorities about cruelty. “The country of Isaac Newton was the only one in the world to protest,” Mr Chertok, 95, told reporters in interviews to mark Sputnik’s anniversary. He and its creator, Sergei Korolyov, were unable to talk about their work as their names were kept secret for years. Mr Korolyov had been taken to work on the programme from a Siberian labour camp, where he had been a miner after Stalin had him imprisoned.

Sputnik, which means “companion” in Russian, was little bigger than a basketball. The shiny silver sphere with four trailing antennae emitted radio signals that were picked up by ham operators as it orbited the globe every 98 minutes.

The transmissions continued for three weeks until Sputnik’s batteries failed and the satellite burnt up in Earth’s atmosphere 92 days after its launch. American scientists had been working on their own satellite, named Vanguard, which weighed less than 2 kilograms (3½ lb). It was dubbed “flop-nik” when it blew up shortly after launch in December that year.

The US was shocked to discover that Sputnik weighed 83.6 kilograms. Mr Korolyov had been working on a 1,000-kilogram satellite but abandoned it for a lighter model after learning of the US plans. The launch on an R-7 rocket scared the White House, which thought the Soviet Union had developed long-range ballistic nuclear missiles capable of striking the US. The space race was born.

Sputnik’s legacy has been immense. Mr Korolyov’s team followed their success by sending the first man, Yuri Gagarin, into space in 1961 and the first unmanned spacecraft to the Moon. The US set up Nasa in 1958 and President Kennedy reacted to Gagarin’s flight by pledging to put a man on the Moon before the end of the 1960s. Neil Armstrong made it in Apollo 11 in July 1969.

Humanity’s adventures into space have somewhat slowed recently.

While the International Space Station and Hubble telescope have increased knowledge of the universe, robots have landed on Mars and unmanned spacecraft have roamed through the solar system, the urgency that characterised the first years of the space race is no longer there. It is hoped that new manned missions planned by Russia and the US can capture the romance of that shiny metal ball Sputnik.

Events of the day

— The Bridge on the River Kwai had just opened in UK cinemas.

— Labour MP Barbara Castle assured the Brighton conference that the party would create a free united Cyprus.

— Riots continued in Warsaw as students demonstrated against the banning of a newspaper by the communist authorities. The Times correspondent described indiscriminate truncheoning" in something resembling a minor civil war"

Source: Times archive

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