-
Aristarchus, an ancient Greek mathematician and astronomer, suggest the theory that the sun is the center of our solar system. (PS, Mrs. Hicks, please ignore the exact date thingy, it wont let me go back to BC, and this is the only site that works even the slightest bit on this computer, so... :D)
-
Nicolaus Copernicus suggested that the earth revolves aroudn the sun. not that it is the center of the solar system, but that Earth spins around it.
-
Tycho Brahe observes and records a supernova (Death of a star) in the Cassiopeia constellation.
-
Hans Lippershay, a Dutch lens maker, invents the telescope. (Or so the story goes.)
-
Galileo Galilei modifies Lippershay's telescope design. (Most think he invented the telescope, but he did not.)
-
This is the year that Edwin Hubble, an American astronomer, discovered distant spiraling nebulae, which turned out to be completely different galaxies than ours!
-
This is the day that Clyde Tombaugh, an American astronomer, discovered the dwarf planet Pluto.
-
This is the day the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satallite in Earth's orbit.
-
Yuri Gagarin, a Russian pilot and cosmonaut, became te first man to venture into outerspace, and the first man to orbit Earth.
-
Valentina Tereshkova, a Russian cosmonaut, becomes the first woman to enter space.
-
This is the day Apollo 11 was launched, which caried Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin to the pride of being the first men on the moon. (Technically, Michael only orbited the moon while the others were on it's surface, but hey! He's lucky he even got to go.)
-
This is the day the of the launch of the first of the Voyager twin spacecrafts, which were designed to study Jupiter and Saturn only, but have made many more discoveries than that. (Cool fact : Unlike you might think, Voyager 2 was launched 16 days BEFORE Voyager 1. Weird, huh?)
-
This is the day that the Edwin Hubble telescope (Remember me mentioning Edwin earlier?) was launched to measure exact distances between Earth and the Cepheid variable stars, but has made many more interesting discoveries. (Note : The picture that goes along with this is NOT the Hubble Telescope, it is just one of it's most famous findings, which are the Pillars of Creation, some "elephant trunks" of gas and dust found in the Eagle Nebula, which is 7,000 light years away from Earth)
-
This is the day the longest space flight ever began. It was 483 dyas and 18 hours long, and was conducted by Valeri Polyakov, a Russian cosmonaut.
-
This is the day the NEAR spacecraft is launched on it's 4 year journey to the asteroid Eros, so it can study the object. (This was the first mission of it's kind.)
-
This is the day John Glenn, an American astronaut, becomes the oldest person in space, at age 77.
-
After orbiting Eros for about 12 months, NEAR makes the first landing on an asteroid in history.
-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyktvC7w7Js This is the day Spirit, became the first rover on Mars, followed by it's twin, Opportunity, which landed just three weeks after Spirit. (Hint : Click the link, it's a cool video)
-
This is the day the Huygens probe made the first landing on an alien moon, Titan (which orbits Saturn).
-
This is the day the Deep Impact space probe made the first landing on a comet in history. Other comet mission, like Stardust, were just flybys, but not this one. (Note : I couldn't find a picture from the actual landing, so I used an artist's concept.)
-
On this day, the Stardust spacecraft returned the first comet samples to Earth's surface.
-
On this day, the Kepler space craft was launched in hope of finding Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.
-
This day made amazing history. It was the day of the first commercial orbit of our home planet, Earth. It was conducted by the organization SpaceX.
-
This is the day the Dawn spacecraft started to orbit the asteroid Vesta. This was the first mission of it's kind.
-
This was a very sad day, because it marked the beginning of the end of the American Space Shuttle program. This is the launch date of the orbiter Atlantis, on the final mission of it's kind.
-
This is the year Almagest, the largest star catalouge at that time, was published. It contained record of 1022 stars, while the most recent count had been 850.
-
This is the year the first accurate star map was created!
