To give an early warning of any Soviet sneak ICBM attack, the governments of the United States, Canada, and Denmark (with the authority over Greenland, where the main radar station was built at Thule Air Base) agreed to build the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS). The R-7, the booster rocket that launched Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2, could be loaded instead with a hydrogen bomb, bringing the threat of a surprise nuclear Pearl Harbor-style attack on the United States and Canada. The event, while a scientific triumph, also signified that the Soviet Union now had the capability to attack the United States with an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). ![]() ![]() ![]() On October 4, 1957, from the Tyuratam range in the Kazakh SSR, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite.
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