After Sputnik: Fifty Years of the Space Age

Smithsonian Publication Celebrates Anniversary of Satellite Launch

The 50^th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, the first man-made object to orbit the earth, will be observed this October. In anticipation of this seminal date in Space Age history is a lush literary project from Smithsonian Books. This beautiful publication originates from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. In celebration of "having lived through five decades of the space age," the doors are flung open on the cream of the Museum's space collection. The most iconic of the 14,000 rocketry and space flight artifacts held in trust by the repository are dramatically photographed and presented in an artful catalog titled After Sputnik: Fifty Years of the Space Age.

This presentation of the curators' greatest hits embraces items running the gamut from the obvious to the oddball: the V-2 ballistic missile; a tube of Russian sour green cabbage space soup; the dented, bent and beleaguered Vanguard TV3 satellite; a Sputnik music box that plays the Internationale punctuated with taunting beeps; the now infamous Disposable Absorption Containment Trunks otherwise known as astronaut diapers; Enterprise, the first Space Shuttle; Anita the industrious Skylab 3 spider; John Glenn's heroic looking spacesuit; a Lunar Roving Vehicle; a ladies evening handbag in the shape of an Apollo Command Module designed by "Mr. Henry."