The real dates
The first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, was launched by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957, ten years before the year this site covers. It was a polished metal sphere about 58 centimetres across that carried radio transmitters and circled the Earth for roughly three months before falling back into the atmosphere. A second satellite, Sputnik 2, followed on 3 November 1957 and carried a dog named Laika, who did not survive the flight.
The first American satellite was Explorer 1, which was launched on 31 January 1958 and carried instruments that helped detect the radiation belts around the Earth, a discovery associated with James Van Allen. A smaller American satellite, Vanguard 1, followed in March 1958. So 1967 was not the year of the first satellite launch; it was the tenth anniversary of Sputnik, and by then orbiting spacecraft were far more common and varied.
Why Sputnik mattered
Sputnik was small and technically simple, but its effect was large. The beeping signal could be picked up by amateur radio operators, and the launch showed that the Soviet Union had a rocket powerful enough to put an object in orbit. In the United States it caused alarm and a debate about education, science and defence. Within a year the country had created NASA, and the space race became a central part of the Cold War.
A busy sky by 1967
Ten years later, a great many satellites were in orbit, launched mainly by the United States and the Soviet Union, with a few from other countries. Their jobs fell into several groups.
Communications. The Telstar satellite of 1962 had shown that television pictures and telephone calls could be relayed across the Atlantic through space. In 1965 the Early Bird satellite became the first commercial communications satellite to operate in a fixed position over the Atlantic, and the international consortium Intelsat expanded its network in the following years. On the Soviet side, the Molniya series used a long, elliptical orbit to serve northern regions.
Weather. American satellites such as the TIROS series and its successors, including the ESSA satellites, sent back cloud pictures that forecasters used in the mid-1960s. The idea of watching weather systems from above was no longer experimental.
Science. The United States launched a series of Explorer satellites and other scientific spacecraft to study radiation, the Earth’s magnetic field and the Sun. The Soviet Union flew its Cosmos series, a large and varied programme whose launches included scientific and military missions.
Navigation and military use. Early navigation satellites, notably the American Navy’s Transit system, were used to help ships fix their positions. Military reconnaissance satellites were also in use on both sides, though little was said about them publicly at the time. One of the aims of the Outer Space Treaty, signed in January 1967, was to keep nuclear weapons out of orbit.
Satellites that circled the Moon
By 1967 satellites were not only circling the Earth. The American Lunar Orbiter spacecraft, three of which flew in 1967, were placed in orbit around the Moon to photograph the surface. They were, in a literal sense, artificial satellites of another world, and their pictures helped planners choose Apollo landing sites.
New national satellites
A few countries beyond the two superpowers had their own satellites by this point. France launched its first, Asterix, in November 1965. In 1967 the United Kingdom’s Ariel 3, the first British-built satellite, was launched in May by an American rocket, and Australia’s WRESAT was launched from Woomera in November 1967 using a modified American rocket. Both show how access to space was starting to spread, although most countries depended on the two main powers for launches.
From a shock to a tool
In 1957 the very existence of an artificial moon had the force of a political event. A decade later, satellites had become a normal part of modern life without most people noticing. Television viewers watched live international events, forecasters used images from space, and ships and aircraft benefited from better communications. In the same year, other kinds of spacecraft were also in the news, such as the Mariner 5 flight past Venus in October, which reached another planet with the same basic launch technology that Sputnik had first demonstrated.
The sequence from Sputnik 1 to the Moon landing in 1969 is short: just under twelve years. The satellites of 1967 sit in the middle of it, as proof that the technology had already passed from demonstration to routine use.