From our tiny little world we have gazed upon the stars for untold thousands of years. Ancient astronomers observed points of light that appeared to move among the stars. They called these objects planets, meaning wanderers. The stargazers also observed comets with sparkling tails, and meteors or shooting stars apparently falling from the sky.
But the years since the 1950s have amounted to a golden age of space exploration. Advancements in rocketry after World War II enabled our machines to break through Earth's gravity and travel to the Moon and to other planets. Humans like Yuri Gagarin have entered space and experience its pure awesomeness.
The United States has sent robotic spacecraft, then human-crewed expeditions, to explore the Moon. Our automated machines have orbited and landed on Venus and Mars, explored the Sun's environment, observed comets, and asteroids, and made close-range observations while flying past Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
These travelers brought a "quantum leap" in our knowledge and understanding of the solar system. Color and complexion have been given to objects that for centuries appeared to Earth's eyes as indistinct points of light.
As we look back to our past, we see that we have made incredible advances in our knowledge and development in space. The next generations of human beings will have witness such advances that we could imagine only though science fiction. They will view our days as pioneering flights through the solar system, in which we have taken the first steps into space.
THE END
The Space Book
was written by
Douglas Bedell, Chris Brown, and David Wu
