Spaceflight

Reg Turnill was working for the BBC in 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the World's first orbiting artifical satellite.

Turnill went on to cover the space race and travelled to the Soviet Union for the press conference following cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's orbital flight and eventually was based in the US to cover NASA's Moon programme.

He got to know the German rocket engineer Werner von Braun, who had developed the Nazi V-2 weapon, and also came to know many of the US astronauts.

In an exclusive interview he spoke to Flight's technical reporter Rob Coppinger about his experiences.

FLIGHTGLOBAL.COM LINKS

PICTURE: SPUTNIK 50: Spaceflight picture of the week

PICTURES: SPUTNIK 50 - 50 images of spaceflight 

PICTURES: SPUTNIK 50 - Images spanning 50 years of spaceflight: past icons and future concepts

VIDEO: SPUTNIK 50 - Graphical representation of the Soviet Union's Sputnik launch

VIDEO: SPUTNIK 50 - BBC's Reg Turnill, the first space reporter talks exclusively to flightglobal.com

AIRSPACE: SPUTNIK 50 -Top 5 exciting space moments on Flight's AirSpace forums

BLOG: SPUTNIK 50 - Rob Coppinger's space blog, Hyperbola

TIMELINE: SPUTNIK 50 - Spaceflight since 1957    

ARCHIVES: SPUTNIK 50 - Search Flight International's articles since 1909

SPUTNIK 50: Sputnik 1's bleep signal as it orbited the Earth 50 years ago

SPUTNIK 50: UK science minister green lights British astronaut missions study

SPUTNIK 50: The Bear shines on.... 50 years ago on 4 October, Russia launched the first satellite spacecraft and begun the space race