History of Space Exploration
Exploration; to travel in a little-known region for discovery, as defined by Webster. Since the age of the Greeks, Anglo-Saxons have been interested in space exploration. From Copernicus to Gaileo to Newton, space has been looked upon with adoring eyes. Space has been regarded time after time as the final frontier. That was until 1957, with the launch of the Sputnik-1, when the Soviet built satellite became the first man-made satellite successfully launched out into outer space. In 1958, the United States matched the Soviets with their own satellite, Explorer III. After that, it became a free-for-all out into the darkest regions of the final frontier. The ascension into space for the United States started off with rockets, satellites, and probes then later moved on to shuttles and larger spacecrafts. In 1946, the United States started their climb towards the heavens with the NRL V-2. The rocket gave the first observations of the Sun's UV spectrum. In 1949, the NRL V-2 gave the first observations of solar X-rays. In 1958, the Explorer III became the US's first satellite and it also discovered Earth's radiation belt. On August 17th, 1958, the US set its sights upon the moon with the Pioneer
Cook, William J. "A drive on the red planet." US News and World Report July 7, 1997: 316-326.Overall, in my opinion, space exploration has not produced much in useful, everyday information in relation to its tremendous budget and bills. It has produced lots of scientific information, but for all the money being spent on these explorations, I believe something more useful for all of society should be found or done. Though I do find it interesting to know the temperatures of Venus and Mercury, and that Neptune has more moons than once thought, I do not see how it is going to help us here on Earth. The most interesting fact that I found in my research was that frogs can throw up, though they rarely do it on Earth. First they throw up the stomach, so it dangles from the its mouth. During 1975, Viking 1 and 2 were launched heading for Mars. They were designed to conduct detailed scientific research on Mars. Viking 1 landed on Mars on July 20th, 1976 and Viking 2 landed on September 3rd, 1976. The two Viking crafts learned more about Mars in a couple of months, than all previous missions did combined. During the summer of 1977 NASA launched Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 towards Jupiter and the outer regions of the solar system. In 1979 they passed Jupiter and sent back color TV images of Jupiter and its moons. Voyager 1 passed Saturn in November of 1980 and Voyager 2 passed Saturn in August of 1981 then passed Uranus in January of 1986. Voyager 2 came onto Neptune in August of 1989 and made the following discoveries: it found four rings around it, found six new moons, a Giant Spot on Neptune itself, and evidence of volcanic type activity on the moon Triton. They are both now heading for the end of the solar system. On May 26th, 1973, Skylab SL-2 became the US's first space station. It orbited the Earth at a distance of approximately 300 miles. It was designed and proved that man can survive in space for periods of time. Hamilton, Calvin J. "Chronology of Space Exploration." Online. In April of 1981 the US launched the Space Shuttle Columbia. This was the first spacecraft designed specifically for re-use of up to 100 times. During the next ten years, four more space s
Some common words found in the essay are:
Endeavour January, Mars July, Hamilton Furthermore, Lunar Orbiter, III US's, NASA Ranger, Mercury Neptune, Cook November, SL-2 US's, Mars August, moon's surface, lunar surface, space exploration, voyager 2, solar system, studied effects, lunar orbiter series, manned apollo, explorer iii, pioneer 3, world report,
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