One of the main battlefields of the Cold War was space, and the battle of the first artificial satellite was won by the USSR on 4 October 1957, when they launched Sputnik 1 from the Baiconur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. So there are dictionaries in which one of the meanings of the word sputnik is "satellite," which actually means "traveler."

But the Russians haven't looked at etymology when the COVID-19 vaccine has recently been called Sputnik V. Kirill Dmitriev, director of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, said last July: “Americans were surprised to hear Sputnik txistuling. The same thing will happen with this vaccine. We will be the first.”