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The first famous satellite was Sputnik, the first man-made object to
orbit the earth.
Sputnik was produced by the Soviet Union
and launched in 1957 and sparked the space race
which lead to John F. Kennedy’s challenge to
“put a man on the moon by the end of the
decade.”
The U.S. placed its first manned satellite into orbit in 1961 with John
Glenn as the astronaut.
Since then, satellites have orbited around
the moon and also explored other distant planets.
Satellites have had a major impact on earth’s communication systems,
and significantly improved our ability to predict
weather systems around the world.
Today, the Hubble Space Telescope is also a
satellite, orbiting the Earth and taking many
pictures of outer space without the interference
of Earth’s atmosphere.
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