Space Exploration
First Telescope:
The first telescope is said to have been invented in 1608 in the Netherlands by an eyeglass maker named Hans but their first recorded use in astronomy was by Galileo Galilei in 1609.[8] In 1668 Isaac Newton built his own reflecting telescope, the first fully functional telescope of this kind, and a landmark for future developments due to its superior features over the previous Galilean telescope.[9]
A string of discoveries in the Solar System (and beyond) followed, then and in the next centuries: the mountains of the Moon, the phases of Venus, the main satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, the rings of Saturn, many comets, the asteroids, the new planets Uranus and Neptune, and many more satellites.
The Orbiting Astronomical Observatory 2 was the first space telescope launched 1968,[10] but the launching of Hubble Space Telescope in 1990[11] set a milestone. As of 1 December 2022, there were 5,284 confirmed exoplanets discovered. The Milky Way is estimated to contain 100–400 billion stars[12] and more than 100 billion planets.[13] There are at least 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe.[14][15] HD1 is the most distant known object from Earth, reported as 33.4 billion light-years away.[16][17][18][19][20][21]
First outer space flights
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MW 18014 was a German V-2 rocket test launch that took place on 20 June 1944, at the Peenemunde Army Research Center in Peenemunde. It was the first human-made object to reach outer space, attaining an apogee of 176 kilometers, which is well above the Kármán line.[23] It was a vertical test launch. Although the rocket reached space, it did not reach orbital velocity, and therefore returned to Earth in an impact, becoming the first sub-orbital spaceflight.[24] In 1949, the Bumper-WAC reached an altitude of 393 kilometers (244 mi), becoming the first human-made object to enter space, according to NASA.[25]
First object in orbit
[edit]The first successful orbital launch was of the Soviet unscrewed Sputnik 1 ("Satellite 1") mission on 4 October 1957. The satellite weighed about 83 kg (183 lb), and is believed to have orbited Earth at a height of about 250 km (160 mi). It had two radio transmitters (20 and 40 MHz), which emitted "beeps" that could be heard by radios around the globe. Analysis of the radio signals was used to gather information about the electron density of the ionosphere, while temperature and pressure data was encoded in the duration of radio beeps. The results indicated that the satellite was not punctured by a meteoroid. Sputnik 1 was launched by an R-7 rocket. It burned up upon re-entry on 3 January 1958.
First human outer space flight
The first successful human spaceflight was Vostro 1 ("East 1"), carrying the 27-year-old Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, on 12 April 1961. The spacecraft completed one orbit around the globe, lasting about 1 hour and 48 minutes. Gagarin's flight resonated around the world; it was a demonstration of the advanced Soviet space program and it opened an entirely new era in space exploration: human spaceflight.
First astronomical body space explorations
The first artificial object to reach another celestial body was Luna 2 reaching the Moon in 1959.[26] The first soft landing on another celestial body was performed by Luna 9 landing on the Moon on 3 February 1966.[27] Luna 10 became the first artificial satellite of the Moon, entering in a lunar orbit on 3 April 1966.[28]
The first crewed landing on another celestial body was performed by Apollo 11 on 20 July 1969, landing on the Moon. There have been a total of six spacecraft with humans landing on the Moon starting from 1969 to the last human landing in 1972.
The first interplanetary flyby was the 1961 Venera 1 flyby of Venus, though the 1962 Mariner 2 was the first flyby of Venus to return data (closest approach 34,773 kilometers). Pioneer 6 was the first satellite to orbit the Sun, launched on 16 December 1965. The other planets were first flown by in 1965 for Mars by Mariner 4, 1973 for Jupiter by Pioneer 10, 1974 for Mercury by Mariner 10, 1979 for Saturn by Pioneer 11, 1986 for Uranus by Voyager 2, 1989 for Neptune by Voyager 2. In 2015, the dwarf planets Ceres and Pluto were orbited by Dawn and passed by New Horizons, respectively. This accounts for flybys of each of the eight planets in the Solar System, the Sun, the Moon, and Ceres and Pluto (two of the five recognized dwarf planets).
The first interplanetary surface mission to return at least limited surface data from another planet was the 1970 landing of Venera 7, which returned data to Earth for 23 minutes from Venus. In 1975, Venera 9 was the first to return images from the surface of another planet, returning images from Venus. In 1971, the Mars 3 mission achieved the first soft landing on Mars returning data for almost 20 seconds. Later, much longer duration surface missions were achieved, including over six years of Mars surface operation by Viking 1 from 1975 to 1982 and over two hours of transmission from the surface of Venus by Venera 13 in 1982, the longest ever Soviet planetary surface mission. Venus and Mars are the two planets outside of Earth on which humans have conducted surface missions with uncrewed robotic spacecraft.
First space station
Salyut 1 was the first space station of any kind, launched into low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 19 April 1971. The International Space Station (ISS) is currently the largest and oldest of the 2 current fully functional space stations, inhabited continuously since the year 2000. The other, Tianlong space station built by China, is now fully crewed and operational.
First interstellar space flight
Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to leave the Solar System into interstellar space on 25 August 2012. The probe passed the heliopause at 121 AU to enter interstellar space.[29]
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