Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The first human being to reach space (defined as an altitude of over 100 km) and to orbit Earth was Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut who was launched in Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. The first human to walk on the surface of another Solar System body was Neil Armstrong , who stepped onto the Moon on July 21, 1969 during the Apollo 11 mission ...
The timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their natural satellites charts the progress of the discovery of new bodies over history. Each object is listed in chronological order of its discovery (multiple dates occur when the moments of imaging, observation, and publication differ), identified through its various designations (including temporary and permanent schemes), and the ...
As of 2024, there are 57 sovereign states and 28 non-sovereign entities where English is an official language. Many administrative divisions have declared English an official language at the local or regional level. Most states where English is an official language are former territories of the British Empire.
This was the first evidence that anything other than the planets repeatedly orbited the Sun, [291] though Seneca had theorized this about comets in the 1st century. [292] Careful observations of the 1769 transit of Venus allowed astronomers to calculate the average Earth–Sun distance as 93,726,900 miles (150,838,800 km), only 0.8% greater ...
First words spoken from another world. USA (NASA) Apollo 11 [27] 21 July 1969 First space launch from another celestial body. First sample return from another celestial body. USA (NASA) Apollo 11 [27] 19 November 1969: First rendezvous on the surface of a celestial body. First meet up between human explorers and a robotic spacecraft in space ...
The Hubble Space Telescope, the first large optical telescope in orbit, is launched using the Space Shuttle, but astronomers soon discovered that it is crippled by a problem with its mirror. A complex repair mission in 1993 allows the telescope to start producing spectacular images of distant stars, nebulae, and galaxies.
1959 – Explorer 6 sends the first image of the entire Earth from space. [178] 1959 – Luna 3 sends the first images of another celestial body, the Moon, from space, including its unseen far side. [179] 1962 – Mariner 2 Venus flyby performs the first closeup observations of another planet. [180]
The first civilization known to have a functional theory of the planets were the Babylonians, who lived in Mesopotamia in the first and second millennia BC. The oldest surviving planetary astronomical text is the Babylonian Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa , a 7th-century BC copy of a list of observations of the motions of the planet Venus, that ...