Space Exploration

Backyard Space Exploration

On a warm summer night, we set the alarm for 2:00 a.m. When the alarm sounded, my little sister and I went outside in our bare feet and sat on the ground to watch the meteor shower. It was an awesome sight seeing them streak across the sky, one after the other. That memory remains strong in my mind even though it was almost 40 years ago. Although, we knew what to expect, and knew what we were seeing, the show in the sky was captivating. One can only imagine the wonder in the minds of men who were seeing meteor showers long before there were answers to some of the universe’s many questions.

Telescopic Space Exploration

Throughout the 1600s and 1700s, strides were made in the development of telescopes advancing space exploration. The first telescope was created in 1609 when Hans Lipperhey, a Dutch lens grinder combined two lenses. That same year, Galileo Galilei built the first astronomical telescope. For the first time man observed craters on the Moon, satellites around Jupiter and, in 1610, witnessed the phases of Venus like those of the Moon. In 1668, Issac Newton built the first successful reflecting telescope. In 1781, William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus, using a mirror telescope he had constructed. In 1801, Guiseppe Piazzi discovered Ceres, the first know asteroid.

Unmanned Space Exploration Timeline

  • 1783: The Montgolfière brothers build the first hot air balloons in France; balloons lifted by hydrogen followed.
  • 1899: After climbing a cherry tree, Robert Goddard resolved to pursue his dream of space flight. Subsequently, he tests rockets with De-Laval nozzles in 1916 and then on March 16, 1926, launches his first liquid-fuel rocket.
  • 1903, 17 December: First successful flight by the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
  • 1911: Andre Bing (Belgium) patents multistage rocket.
  • 1949, 24 February: "Bumper" 2-stage rocket reaches altitude of 393 km.
  • 1957, 4 October: Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1.
  • 1958, 31 January: Launch of Explorer 1.
  • 1959, 2 January: Soviet Union launches Luna 1, comes within 6000 km of Moon; Luna 3 (October) takes picture of Moon's far side.
  • 1970, 24 April: First launch of a Chinese satellite, by the Long March 1 rocket.
  • 1988, 15 November: Soviet space shuttle "Buran" conducts its first (unmanned) flight.
  • 1990, 2 April: U.S. deploys "Hubble" telescope in Earth orbit.
  • 1990, 10 August: NASA's Magellan spacecraft enters orbit around Venus. For next 5 years, its radar altimeter maps most of the surface.
  • 1995, 18-30 December: Long time exposure by the Hubble telescope ("Deep Field") reveals the most distant galaxies.
  • 2002, 17 October: Following strong early hints of a black hole at the center of our galaxy, observations are reported on a star's orbit around it, suggesting the black hole has the mass of 3.7 million suns.
  • 2005, January: Brown, Trujillo, and Rabinowitz discover a new planet is in our solar system (from images taken in 2003), at a distance of 97 AU, apparently larger than Pluto. It is given the name Eris.

 

Manned (or Animal) Space Exploration Timeline

  • 1947, 14 October: Chuck Yaeger pilots X-1 rocket plane, breaks sound barrier.
  • 1957, 3 November: U.S.S.R launches Sputnik 2, carrying a dog named Laika.
  • 1961, 12 April: Uri Gagarin becomes first human to orbit Earth.
  • 1961, 5 May: Allan Shepard becomes first American in space, completes 15-minute suborbital hop.
  • 1961, 25 May: U.S. President J.F. Kennedy announces project to land human on Moon within decade.
  • 1962, 20 February: John Glenn becomes first American in orbit.
  • 1969, 20 July: Apollo 11 astronauts land on the Moon.
  • 1970, 11 February: Japan launches first spacecraft, using Lambda 4S rocket.
  • 1973, 14 May: U.S. launches Skylab space station. Astronauts soon follow.
  • 1981, 12 April: First flight of the Space Shuttle.
  • 1986, 28 January:  U.S. loses Space shuttle Challenger with all its crew, exploding shortly after launch from Cape Canaveral.
  • 2003, 1 February: Space shuttle Columbia disintegrates above Texas, during re-entry.

Future Space Exploration

In 2010, President Barack Obama outlined a new direction for human spaceflight, proposing several new programs to foster a sustainable human exploration enterprise.

Sources

 http://www.phy6.org/stargaze/Stimelin.htm
 http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/index.html

 

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OTHER PAGES ABOUT SPACE EXPLORATION

Pioneering Space

Pioneering Space! So, why did Dynetics decide to take a chance on pioneering space? I like to think in terms of logic and profits as opposed to robots and space travel. Scientists have estimated there is about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon and this is enough to power the world for thousands of years.

Ansari X PRIZE

The Ansari X PRIZE was the first X PRIZE competition where a $10 million prize was awarded to the first non-government team to launch a manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. Awarded to a team led by Scaled Composites, SpaceShipOne was the world’s first privately-built manned spacecraft to reach space.

Where is the Space Station

Where is the Space Station? Internatonal Space Station Viewing - How can you find out when and where to look for the International Space Station? The International Space Station (ISS) quietly orbits the Earth about once every 90 minutes. At an altitude of roughly 200 miles, that works out to a mind-boggling speed of about 17,500 miles per hour!

Black Holes in Space

Black holes in space are concentrated areas of mass whose gravitational pull is so intense that even light cannot escape it. We know black holes exist not because we can see them, but because of the impact they have on the space around them. A black hole’s mass is concentrated at a single point at its center called its singularity. Our solar system’s galaxy, the Milky Way, may contain millions of black holes.

Comets in Space

Comets in Space – Where Else Would They Be? Comets are small,irregularly shaped,composed nonvolatile grains and frozen gases, diameters usually range from 2,460 feet or less to about 12 miles. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 and Comet Hale-Bopp and Jupiter was first collision in our Solar System recorded by Hubble Space Telescope

Space Quotes

Great Space Quotes that motivate the Rocket City Space Pioneers! Quotes by Dr. Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 17 Astronaut; US physicist and pioneer rocket engineer, Robert H. Goddard; Wernher von Braun; former NASA Administrator, Dr. Michael Griffin; Dr. Paul Spudis, Senior Staff Scientist, Lunar and Planetary Institute; Tim Pickens, Rocket City Space Pioneers Team Leader

The First Man in Space

Yuri Gagarin of the USSR was the first man in space. On the morning of April 12, 1961, Gagarin slid into the Vostok 1 space capsule at the Tyruatam spaceport. Ten minutes later, he was in orbit traveling faster than anyone in history at 17,000 miles per hour. The flight lasted 108 minutes. Gagarin returned to Earth to international acclaim and was named a Hero of the Soviet Union. He traveled abroad frequently, serving as a goodwill ambassador for the Soviet Union. Sadly, the first man in space never flew into space again.

Chandra X-ray Observatory

The Chandra X-ray Observatory has returned a treasure trove of X-ray images of star clusters, supernova remnants, galactic eruptions, and collisions between galaxy clusters. Chandra has been one of NASA's most successful space science missions.

Compton Gamma Ray Observatory

The Compton Telescope / Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO), the second of NASA's four Great Observatories, was launched in 1991 to study gamma rays, which is the most powerful form of radiation in the Universe. The other Great Observatories include the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope.