Red Moon Rising : Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age

On October 4 1957, the Soviet Union secretly launched Earth's first artificial moon.

No bigger than a basketball, this tiny satellite was powered by a car battery.

Yet for all its simplicity, Sputnik stunned the world.

In a single swoop, it transformed science fiction into reality, passing over the stunned American continent once every 101 minutes. "Red Moon Rising" tells the story of Sputnik and more: how the Soviets beat the US with one of the greatest scientific and psychological coups of the Cold War, and how the Americans eventually fought back.

Above all, it is a political and scientific thriller, a true-life drama with a colourful cast of characters, pitting two nations and ideologies against each other in a race that would lay the foundations of the modern technological world.