Two years before the triumphant "Beep! Beep! Beep!" of the First Satellite, American science popularizer Willie Ley detailed what the spacecraft of the Space Age's beginning would be like. Small, unmanned, with minimal instruments – he calculated the mass, trajectory, and goals of these "pioneers."

Expert Igor Afanasyev from Pro Cosmo highlighted Willie Ley's prophetic accuracy that proved remarkably true. Ley's insights into the characteristics of the first satellites, including their size, unmanned nature, and basic instrumentation, were remarkably prescient and aligned with the actual developments in the early days of space exploration.