The Space Age officially began on October 4, 1957, (1) the Soviet Union launched the modest 185-pound Sputnik Ⅰ, the first (2) satellite to orbit the earth. The following month, Russians succe- ssfully launched the 1100-pound Sputnik Ⅱ, (3) carried into space the globe, a female dog (4) Laika, who suffocated (窒息) on the sixth day of the (5) because of a failure (6) the internal temperature of the craft. But the satellite itself orbited the earth for 162 days and (7) up on reentering the earth’s atmosphere.
The United States, (8) second fiddle (小提琴) to its superpower (9) , orbited its first satellite, Explorer I, on January 31, 1958. It was a lightweight, 18-pound craft, carrying not animals but (10) instruments to study the (11) bands of energy in space (12) as the Van Allen radiation belts. Within the (13) fif years man had gone to the moon, searching beneath its (14) and dusty soil for (15) of life (there were (16) ), and begun probing more distant (17) of the solar system. (18) physicist, Werner Von Braun, played a crucial role in this odyssey (史诗), especially in (19) the bold scheme for the 1969 (20) of three Americans on the moon.