Sputnik and the Dawn of the Space Age this week on planetary radio. Radio. At the anniversary, everyone, 47 years ago, a metal ball trailing four whip antennae was hurled into Earth orbit. The beeping

beeping-antennae was hurled into Earth orbit. The beeping transmitter aboard Sputnik 1 announced that humankind had begun to open the

final frontier.

I'm Matt Kaplan back with Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the solar system

and beyond.

Our very special guest this week is Rald Xenurovich Sagdeev, who directed the Soviet Space Research Institute for 15 years.

Later Bruce Batts joins the celebration during this week's edition of What's Up, including a new space trivia contest.

Let's get underway with this review of the week's space headlines.

It's one down and one to go for Burke Rutan's spaceship won.

The suborbital space plane came closer to winning the $10 million

dollar Ansari X Prize after successfully completing the first of two required

flights above 100 kilometers.

There were some scary moments on the morning of September 29th

when the craft did a series of unplanned barrel rolls,

but pilot Mike Melville kept his cool.

Tune into planetary radio next week for our special coverage of the October 4 attempt.

The Cassini-Huygen spacecraft may seem to have arrived at Saturn only to head back into space.

No worries, the huge probe's first orbit is a whopper, taking it out where it can snap family

photos of the ring planet and most of its moons. It will stay much closer to

Saturn from now on with what is hoped to be a spectacular fly-by of Titan late

this month. High above another planet in our solar system, Mars Global Surveyor has pulled

off another amazing feet of observation. In a super high-resolution photo, you can

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