index of sculptures 1988 to 2024
Sputnik
2006
Bas-relief in salvaged wood #32, 230 x 200 x 18cm.
Concordia Collection, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Laika / Лайка (1969)
About Sputnik
Sputnik-1 / Спу́тник-1 was the first man made satellite. The 58 cm (23”) diameter polished metal sphere beset with four external antennas was launched into orbit on October 4th 1957. It could be seen and its radio pulses could be heard all over the world. The Russians’ unexpected space-tech savvy triggered the Space Race and set in motion a whole range of technological and scientific development. Traveling at over 8 kilometers a second, Sputnik-1 took 96.2 minutes for each orbit. It continued to transmit its bleep-bleep signal until its batteries ran out on October 26th. By the time it fell from orbit three months after launch, it had traveled about 70 million kilometers.
(source: wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik)
The first living creature to orbit the Earth was a stray dog from the streets of Moscow named Laika. The mongrel was trained with two other dogs, and was eventually selected to occupy the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 that was launched into space on November 3, 1957. There was no chance of surviving the trip because the technology to de-orbit had not been developed yet. The purpose of the experiment was to see if humans could possibly endure the extreme force of being shot into space and if they could function in weightlessness.
(source: wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika
Спутник-2. Лайка.
More ‘space junk’: