Niue, a sovereign state in free association with New Zealand, uses two official legal tender currencies. The New Zealand Dollar is the circulation currency for daily transactions, while the government also authorises legal tender coins in the Niue Dollar currency for collector's purposes.
A number of mints issue a large variety of commemorative, bullion and collector coins under the authority of Niue. These coins are dedicated to historical or general popular culture themes not related to Niue itself. Many of them are in standard bullion sizes - typically, one ounce of silver (abbreviated as 1 oz Ag, where "Ag" comes from the Latin word for silver, Argentum).
This coin is the third issue in the Milky Way series by the Czech Mint, and shows the first artificial satellite of Earth, Sputnik 1.
The mint says about it:
The third silver coin in the Milky Way collectible series is dedicated to the vehicle that sent mankind into the space age - a satellite named Sputnik 1. However, this incredible milestone was achieved thanks to not one, but two wars. World War II brought not only hardship to humanity, but also extraordinary technological advances. One of the latest inventions designed to destroy was the rocket. You will recall the dreaded Soviet Katyusha or the legendary German V-2 missiles.
After the war, these technologies were further developed and given another task in addition to destruction - to transport their creators into space. Thus was born the race between the two superpowers - the USSR and the USA - and their two ideologies to see who could conquer space first. This "space race" became one of the key events of the Cold War, and the Soviet Union claimed its first victory on 4 October 1957. The brilliant engineer Sergei Korolyov then sent the first man-made satellite into Earth orbit. The spherical satellite with four antennas, which was carried into space by an R-7 rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, was named Sputnik, meaning "fellow traveller". The world stood still - regardless of nationality or beliefs, people hoped to catch a glimpse, if only for a brief moment, of the triumph of human ingenuity. Experts and radio amateurs from around the world listened to Sputnik's signal and helped Soviet scientists gather information about its trajectory. Humanity had its first space traveller, but the race to conquer space was just beginning...
No photographs or computer graphics were used as the subject - the author of the coin created an original watercolour painting. | 
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