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Jan 1, 1500
Wan-Hu
around 1500, a Chinese official named Wan-Hu came up with the idea of flying through the air in a rocket-propelled chair-kite assembly. Serving as his own test pilot, he vanished in a bright flash during the initial flight of this rocket-propelled device. -
Galileo and the Copernican Principle
Galileo's studies of the universe convinced him to make the Copernican principle that the Earth revolved around the Sun. This create problems between Galileo and the Roman Catholic Church. He had to retract his support for the theory in 1632. In 1633 the Spanish Inquisition and him placed under house arrest until his death in 1642. -
Principia Mathematica
Issac Newton was influenced by Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo . They began to combine their ideas and work. Together they came up with Principia Mathematicas. Principia Mathematicas is a description of the laws of planetary motion, but it also contained more universal material that was to influence the way all science developed. The book was an explanation of physics, starting with definitions of mass, force, and motion. -
Sir William Herschel
Herschel was the first to recognize the structure of the galaxy. By conducting a large number of star counts, Herschel found that stars were more in the galactic plane and in the Milky Way and there were less toward the celestial poles. Herschel was also responsible for establishing the motion of the Sun and trying to calculate its speed. In 1787 he discovered two satellites of Uranus and two of Saturn. -
Animals in Rockets
Claude Ruggieri rocketed small animals into space as early as 1806. -
William Moore
Moore’s first published writing was “Observations on the Problem Respecting the Radius of Curvature,” in Nicholson’s Journal of Natural Philosophy (1808). In 1810 he was prompted to investigate the ballistics of rockets when the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences offered a prize for the best paper describing the motion of rockets. Moore examined hypothetical rocket motion, both with and without air resistance, but did not submit a paper. -
Soviet Astronauts in orbit for 366 days 1967-1968
2 Soviet astronauts spent 366 consecutive days in orbit. -
Apollo 8 Launched
The first piloted voyage to the moon when the United States launched the Apollo 8. It orbited the moon 10 times and came back to Earth. -
Apollo 11 Lands on the Moon
Neil A. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their Apollo 11 module on the moon. Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon. -
Columbia Launched off
United States space shuttle Columbia launched off. It was the first reusable spaceship and the first spacecraft able to land at an ordinary airfield. -
Challenger Tradegy
The U.S. shuttle, Challenger tore apart in midair, killing all seven astronauts aboard. -
Columbia Tradegy
The Columbia broke apart as it reentered Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven of its crew members. -
Rovers to Mars
NASA launched two rovers to Mars -
Messanger Spacecraft
The Messager Spacecraft enters Mercury's Orbit -
Model of Solar System
The ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician Claudius Ptolemy made a model of the solar system, it eventually turned out to be completely wrong.
