How can the movement of energy can be tracked by observing the changes the energy causes to matter

because growing process had stoped after 4-5 year

the only real purpose of sputnik 1 was to beat the us into space. we were getting close to launching a useful satellite, explorer 1 - which launched on january 31, 1958. the ussr had to beat that, so they launched sputnik 1 on october 4, 19