Helvensteijn.com

Almost 2 weeks ago, the smiley celebrated its 25th anniversary. Today, the celebration is for Sputnik 1. Exactly 50 years ago, on October 4th, 1957, it became the first man-made object in outer space. Technically it did little more than sendig radio beeps back to Earth, but more importantly, it set off the Space Race between the United Stated and the Soviet Union, lasting well into the 1970’s.

In my opinion, this event is still one of the most significant technological breakthroughs in history. After all, if the Soviets hadn’t launched their “football with antennae” into space, the entire Space Race might never have took place, and countless innovations that space exploration has lead to, might never have been made.

Today, the Russians still play a major role in manned space exploration. If it wasn’t for their Soyuz Program, the International Space Station would have probably been abandoned after the 2003 Columbia disaster. In fact, while the United States are struggling to design and build a replacement for their Space Shuttle, the Russians are still sucessfully deploying their 41 years old Soyuz rockets — though somewhat modernized along the way — and are not planning on retiring them any time soon.

I’m looking forward to the next 50 years of space exploration. There are some interesting missions underway right now. But despite all the probes and manned missions we’ve sent into space since 1957, our own Solar System still remains largely unexplorered. Let alone what lies beyond. I predict that the age of space exploration — whether it be with probes or manned space craft — has only just began.