TELESCOPES: Italian scientist, Galileo made important discoveries with the telescope. Early Greek and Roman scientists believed that Earth was the centre of the Universe. Copernicus was the first scientist to state that the Earth orbited the Sun. Galileo discovered that he was right using his telescope, but the Church forced him to change his mind. He announced publicly that he does not believe that the Earth orbits the Sun. However, some people claim that Galileo whispered, “But I do believe it,” as he left the crowd.

PROBES:Manned and unmanned space probes have provided a great new source of scientific data on the nature and origin of the solar system. As the closest neighbor of the earth, the moon has been the objective of many space missions. In 1958 the first attempts by the United States and the USSR at lunar probes failed. The Russian Luna 2, launched September 12, 1959, hit the moon 36 hours later. Since that date, many moon shots have been made by both countries, with mixed results. The first photographs of the far side of the moon were taken by Luna 3, which was launched by the USSR on October 4, 1959. One of the most dramatically successful moon shots was the mission accomplished by Ranger 7. Just before hitting the side of the moon that faces the earth, it transmitted 4316 television pictures of the lunar surface. 

ROCKETS: On April 12, 1961, Gagarin, then a major in the air force, became the first man to travel in space when he rode aboard the earth satellite Vostok (later referred to as Vostok 1) on a 27,400 km/hr (17,000 mph) single orbit of the earth. The flight lasted 1 hr 48 min, on an elliptical course having an apogee of 327 km (203 mi) and a perigee of 180 km (112 mi). He was killed in the crash of a test airplane. In 1969, the USA launched Apollo 11, which landed on the Moon. There were several astronauts but only one of them was brave enough to be the first human to land on the moon : Neil Armstrong.