Thursday, 4:30 PM
N.H. man was one of the first to track Sputnik
(AP File Photo)
This first official picture of the Soviet satellite Sputnik I was issued in Moscow October 9, 1957, showing the satellite with its four antennas resting on a pedestal.
By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff
A New Hampshire man was one of the first people in the United States to spot the track of the Soviet Union's Sputnik satellite, the 184-pound spiked metal ball that launched the Space Age 50 years ago.
Sputnik was launched by the Soviets on Oct. 4, 1957. But no one knew at the time where it would appear in the sky.
Richard Brown, 65, of Windham was 15 at the time. He and his father, Robert, a professor of earth sciences at New Haven State Teacher's College, along with an amateur astronomer, were observing the skies at 6:23 a.m. on Oct. 10, 1957 when they spotted the rocket that was traveling with the satellite.
"My father had predicted that it would appear that morning of the 10th somewhere low in the northern sky," he said. "I turned around and caught a quick glimpse of it just when it went over the horizon."
After the news of the launch several days earlier, Brown said, "Everybody and his dog knew about it. Everybody was anticipating seeing it. Everybody was looking at the skies and yelling at the government and Eisenhower, why didn't we do something like that?"
"It was a long time ago, that's for sure," he said. "It was just a very chilly morning and the sky was very clear, very dark ... The rocket itself was very bright, even in that light."
A headline in the Oct. 11, 1957, New York Herald Tribune proclaimed the "First U.S. Sight of Satellite." The story said American scientists were "zeroing in on the orbit" of Sputnik with the first sighting in New Haven.
"These observations will enable American astronomers to place the satellite in space within a couple of hundred feet," the article said.
Historians say the launch of Sputnik kicked off the Space Age by heightening interest in America in space and science. Worried that the Soviets might gain a technological edge, the US government increased tenfold the money spent on science, education and research.
Actually, it turns out that experts say the first sighting was a few days earlier in Alaska. But that hasn't stopped Southern Connecticut State University (the successor to New Haven State) from planning an Oct. 10 forum with Brown as the keynote speaker.
Brown, who has been married 43 years and is a software and hardware engineer who works in Lawrence, Mass., said it was a thrill to see the satellite.
"It virtually changed the world. No question about it," he said.
