We thought we'd look at a few things about the Sputnik satellite that you might not have known. The first thing, it was only about the size of a beach ball. Sputnik weighed £184 and was 23 inches wide. It also featured a double barreled antenna, the larger of which was 12.8ft. Soviet space officials had wanted the nation's first satellite to be much bigger than a beach ball. The original plan called for Lofting, a nearly 3000 pound craft outfitted with a variety of scientific instruments