On a cold October day in nineteen fifty-seven, the Soviet Union launched a small satellite into orbit around the Earth.Radio Moscow made the announcement."The first artificial Earth satellite in the world has now been created.This first satellite was today successfully launched in the USSR."The world's first satellite was called Sputnik 1.Sputnik was an important propaganda victory for the Soviets in the Cold War with the United States.Many people believed the nation that controlled space could win any war.And the Soviet Union had reached outer space first.The technology that launched Sputnik probably began in the late nineteenth century.A Russian teacher of that time, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, decided that a rocket engine could provide power for a space vehicle.In the early nineteen hundreds, another teacher -- American Robert Goddard -- tested the idea.