On October 4, 1957, radio operators picked up beeping sounds from the first man-made satellite ever to orbit the Earth—Sputnik, launched by the Soviet Union. The never-before heard signals ushered in the space age and changed life in space—and on Earth—forever. In this podcast marking the sixtieth anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, Museum Astrophysicist Michael Shara discusses the outsized impact of that beach-ball-sized satellite and those beeps heard ’round world.

For a full transcript of this podcast, please visit: https://www.amnh.org/explore/news-blogs/podcasts/sputnik-sixty-years-later