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Sputnik 1 was transmitting in the amateur radio bands and getting good publicity as hams all over the world picked up the signals. Army radio engineers and many amateurs spent the night of 4 October 1957 building and modifying their equipment for Doppler tracking. Crude orbital data were available within a day. At NRL, the minitrack team had already begun to modify Minitrack for 40-MHz reception. Alerted byradio announcements of the Sputnik launching, they burned the midnight oil cutting 40-MHz dipoles and planning network modifications. 40-MHz crosses were quickly installed at Blossom Point, San Diego, and Lima; and, later, at Santiago and Woomera. In several days, good tracking data were being received. Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2, in fact, gave Minitrack good shakedown runs.

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