Former cosmonauts, engineers and space officials participated in ceremonies devoted to one of the most significant moments in space history.

Veterans of the Soviet space programme gathered at the Russian Cosmonaut Training Centre, Star City, outside Moscow to witness the unveiling of a monument to commemorate the launch of Sputnik in 1957.

Military officials also held a ceremony near the Kremlin wall to lay flowers at the grave of Sergei Korolyov, who supervised the Sputnik Project.

The launch of Sputnik was a propaganda coup for the then-Soviet leadership under Nikita Khrushchev during the Cold War and began the intense rivalry in space race between Moscow and Washington.

On October 4, 1957, Sputnik 1 was launched aboard a Soviet R-7 rocket from what is now the Baikonur Space Centre in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan. The satellite circled the globe for three months, covering around 60 million km and sending back signals to earth for 22 days. The satellite burned up on re-entering the atmosphere on January 4, 1958.

The resulting investment in space programmes by the US and the USSR led to the space race and, subsequently, Yuri Gagarin’s first manned space flight in 1961, followed by Neil Armstrong’s journey into immortality eight years later.

Fifty years after Sputnik’s launch, more than 800 satellites used for communications, surveillance and navigation now orbit the earth. “The launch of Sputnik was at least as significant for mankind as the discovery of America by Columbus,” said Yuri Karash, an expert on the Russian space programme. “By launching Sputnik, people started expanding their habitat beyond earth,” he added.

Now, after a long period of decline in the Russian space programme, Russian scientists and cosmonauts have finally secured a significant budget from the government.

They have been given $12 billion to spend over the next decade —a small amount compared to NASA’s budget but enough for the Russians to have ambitious plans. These include sending a manned mission to Mars, which could happen by 2020. Russian and US space chiefs signed agreements in Moscow on Wednesday to co-operate on unmanned missions that would search for potential water deposits beneath the surface of the moon and Mars.