Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, was only the size of a beach ball and had no cameras.

Sputnik 1 was a 58-centimeter (23-inch) diameter sphere made of a highly polished aluminum alloy. It featured four external radio antennas designed to broadcast pulses at 20.005 and 40.002 megahertz. These signals were easily picked up by amateur radio operators across the globe, proving that the Soviet Union had successfully reached orbit.The satellite was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan using an R-7 Semyorka rocket. It reached an elliptical low Earth orbit with a perigee of 227 kilometers and an apogee of 947 kilometers. Despite its small size, the polished surface was bright enough to be seen from the ground with the naked eye at sunrise or sunset.The mission provided critical data about the density of the upper atmosphere through the measurement of its orbital decay. It also offered the first opportunity to test how radio waves traveled through the ionosphere. After completing 1,440 orbits and traveling about 70 million kilometers, the satellite finally re-entered and burned up in Earth's atmosphere on January 4, 1958.This event triggered the 'Sputnik Crisis' in the United States, leading to the creation of NASA in 1958 and the acceleration of the Cold War Space Race. The success of Sputnik 1 demonstrated that the Soviet Union possessed the ballistic missile technology necessary to reach any point on the planet. This technological leap changed global politics and scientific exploration forever.