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.

它延续了1961年由奥斯卡计划开始的行动。奥斯卡计划是一个总部设在美国的组织，在人造卫星“斯普特尼克”之后仅四年就制造并发射了第一颗非政府卫星。

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That belief was sustained by means of faked statistics and, in the 1950s, by the success of the earth-orbiting Sputnik project.

ECONOMIST: A Survey of the 20th Century