Sputniks

Cultural  

1. A series of Soviet satellites launched in 1957 and in following years. These were the first artificial satellites.

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The appearance of Sputnik stimulated a great deal of effort in the education of scientists and engineers in the United States. This period is now referred to as the post-Sputnik boom.

Example Sentences

They fly high in rockets and Sputniks to measure the energy of cosmic rays.

From Time Magazine Archive

The Russians have not told the thrust of the first-stage rockets that tossed their Sputniks off the earth, and U.S. authorities do not agree about this detail.

From Time Magazine Archive

But the dominant note will be simple and wholesome fear�fear of the enormous, suddenly dramatized power of Soviet Russia, which the Sputniks blazoned across the world's skies.

From Time Magazine Archive

With nine satellites put into orbit around the earth, the U.S. had come a long way since the first Soviet Sputniks jolted the nation's confidence in the fall of 1957.

From Time Magazine Archive

But fashions change, old loves return, and now that Sputniks clutter up the sky with new and unfamiliar moons, the readers of science-fiction are willing to wait for tomorrow to read tomorrow's headlines.

From The Door Through Space by Bradley, Marion Zimmer