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This timeline of artificial satellites and space probes includes uncrewed spacecraft including technology demonstrators, observatories, lunar probes, and interplanetary probes. First satellites from each country are included. Not included are most Earth science satellites, commercial satellites or crewed missions .
Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States in 1958 and was part of the U.S. participation in the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The mission followed the first two satellites, both launched by the Soviet Union during the previous year, Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2. This began a Space Race during the Cold War between the ...
This is a timeline of Solar System exploration ordering events in the exploration of the Solar System by date of spacecraft launch. It includes: All spacecraft that have left Earth orbit for the purposes of Solar System exploration (or were launched with that intention but failed), including lunar probes. A small number of pioneering or notable ...
The Sun remains a main-sequence star today. [32] As the early Solar System continued to evolve, it eventually drifted away from its siblings in the stellar nursery, and continued orbiting the Milky Way's center on its own. The Sun likely drifted from its original orbital distance from the center of the galaxy.
Italian polymath Galileo Galilei was an early user and made prolific discoveries, including the phases of Venus, which definitively disproved the arrangement of spheres in the Ptolemaic system. Galileo also discovered that the Moon was cratered, that the Sun was marked with sunspots, and that Jupiter had four satellites in orbit around it. [13]
Sensors on Earth observation satellites often take measurements of emitted energy over some portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (e.g., UV, visible, infrared, microwave, or radio). [ 1 ] The invention of climate research through the use of satellite remote telemetry began in the 1960s through development of space probes to study other planets.
5 March 1958. U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency. Failed to orbit. Vanguard 1. United States. 17 March 1958. U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. Oldest artificial satellite in orbit, along with its upper stage. Explorer 3.
Heliocentric orbit. A heliocentric orbit (also called circumsolar orbit) is an orbit around the barycenter of the Solar System, which is usually located within or very near the surface of the Sun. All planets, comets, and asteroids in the Solar System, and the Sun itself are in such orbits, as are many artificial probes and pieces of debris.