It continued the efforts, begun in 1961, by Project OSCAR—a US-based group that built and launched the very first nongovernmental satellite just four years after Sputnik.
2019年6月六级真题（第三套）阅读 Section B
The first Cube Sat was created in the early 2000s, as a way of enabling Stanford graduate students to design, build, test and operate a spacecraft with similar capabilities to the USSR's Sputnik.
2019年6月六级真题（第三套）阅读 Section B
英英词典释义
Noun
1. a Russian artificial satellite;
"Sputnik was the first man-made satellite to orbit the earth"