TODAY marks 60 years since the launch of Sputnik, the first satellite, was launched into space by the Russians.

In an abridged excerpt from his book, ‘Space Has No Frontier: The Terrestrial Life and Times of Bernard Lovell’, John Bromley-Davenport recalls how the event afforded Goostrey’s struggling Jodrell Bank observatory – castigated in the press as a white elephant – a similar launch into the forefront of space research.

On the morning of Friday, October 4, 1957, the world awoke to the news that Russia had placed a satellite in orbit around the earth. The chains of gravity had been shaken off and a manmade object had been projected into space.

By August 1957, everything was in place for the launch.

In that same month Bernard Lovell’s plans to build and operate the largest radio telescope in the world at Jodrell Bank hit the buffers. The telescope was barely operational, but it had already cost seven times the original estimate.

For 12 years they had pursued their goal of creating a massive instrument that would plumb the depths of time and the Universe. Now there was no money to finish the job, and their ambitions were in tatters. Little did they know that help was on the way from a wholly unexpected quarter.

The launch of Sputnik was the cue for frenzied activity from the media, which descended upon Jodrell Bank expecting news of signals direct from the satellite. Bernard adopted a somewhat snooty attitude towards monitoring a series of bleeps that could be detected by any small receiver.

Using the telescope to pick up the signal from Sputnik was not on his agenda.

Monday morning began early with a telephone call from Robert Cockburn, the Controller of Guided Weapons and Electronics at the Ministry of Supply; it was a call that transformed the fortunes of the telescope.

Cockburn said that not a single facility in the western world had been able to detect or track the launch rocket, which was believed to be an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile. Could Bernard use the telescope to find it? The request threw him a lifeline and he needed no second invitation to grasp hold of it.

Here, at last, was a real task to perform and an opportunity to show the world what the instrument was capable of doing. The story of Jodrell Bank was changed in an instant.

October 12

We are sitting at the front of the darkened house in the midst of a spellbound throng; we see the Professor, his shadow vividly silhouetted on the screen, pointing to the upper of two thick black lines running across it. This line, he explains, is the track of the rocket and the lower one shows the strength of the signal.

The media are impressed. The next day the telescope is front page news across the world. In one night the telescope has been rescued from oblivion.

Sixty years later, the Lovell Telescope remains at the forefront of research.