Astérix

On 26 November 1965, at the Hammaguir firing range in the Algerian Sahara, a slender three-stage rocket called Diamant climbed away from the desert on its very first flight. In its nose rode a 42-kilogram satellite shaped like a spinning top, officially designated A-1, affectionately renamed Astérix after the indomitable comic-strip Gaul. Minutes later, France had done what only the Soviet Union and the United States had done before: placed a satellite in orbit with a rocket entirely its own.

Diamant was the polished product of France's 'precious stones' programme, a series of test rockets named Agate, Topaze, Émeraude, Saphir, and Rubis that had methodically proven each stage and technology through the early 1960s. The gamble paid off with a maiden-flight success on a brand-new launcher. The satellite itself was less lucky: the separating payload fairing damaged its telemetry antennas and its signals were soon lost. American tracking radars confirmed that Astérix was in orbit all the same, and the third space power was real.

The triumph carried an expiry date. Hammaguir stood on Algerian soil, and under the Évian Accords that ended the Algerian war, France had to abandon the base by mid-1967. The search for a replacement led to Kourou in French Guiana, today the spaceport of all Europe. Astérix needed no such relocation: launched into an orbit of roughly 530 by 1,700 kilometres, it is still circling Earth six decades later and is expected to remain aloft for centuries, a silent Gaul outlasting everyone who built it.