Beyond Earth History Blog

Ader Éole The first aircraft  Clément Ader's Ader Éole in flight in a drawing published on French magazine L'Illustration in 1891. Credit: Wikimedia Commons The first confirmed manned powered flight was made by a French inventor and engineer Clément Ader (1841–1925) in an uncontrolled monoplane Éole of his own design, on October 9, 1890 (according to some sources on October 8, 1890).      The Ader Éole, also called Avion (French for aeroplane), was a bat-like design aircraft run by a lightweight alcohol-burning steam engine with 4 cylinders with a power rating of 20 hp (15 kW), driving a four-blade a propeller at the front of the aircraft, but lacking any means for the pilot to control the direction of flight. The engine weighed 51 kg. The plane had a length of 6.5 m, the wings had a span of 14 m and all-up weight was 300 kg. It was named Éole ...

Kepler's Supernova Illustration from Johannes Kepler's book De Stella Nova in Pede Serpentarii indicating the location of the 1604 supernova, marked with an N on the right foot of the Ophiuchus constellation .  Supernova SN 1604, also known as Kepler's Supernova, Kepler's Nova or Kepler's Star, in the constellation Ophiuchus, was first seen by observers in northern Italy on the evening of October 9, 1604, and far eastern (Chinese and Korean) within days thereafter.      Visible to the naked eye, Kepler's Star was brighter at its peak than any other star in the night sky, with an apparent magnitude of −2.5. It was visible during the day for over three weeks and remained visible to the naked eye for 18 months. Records of its sighting exist in European, Chinese, Korean, and Arabic sources. It was the second supernova to be observed in a generation (after SN 1572 seen by Tycho ...

 Ulysses The mission to the Sun's poles     Artist’s impression of the Ulysses spacecraft above the Sun's pole. Credit: ESA    In the early 1970s, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) began planning a mission that would send two spacecraft through Jupiter’s gravitational field and on to the Sun, where they would pass over the north and south poles, mapping previously unstudied regions of the Sun and gathering vital data about solar wind, plasma, and the Sun’s magnetic field. The mission would require what is known as an “out-of-ecliptic” orbit, meaning that a spacecraft would operate outside the ecliptic plane in which most major bodies orbit the Sun. Scientists began studying out-of-ecliptic missions at the dawn of the space age, but it took decades to develop the technology to navigate the vast distances required and eff...

 Robert Hutchings Goddard.  The father of American rocketry.    Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard. Credit: NASA  Robert Hutchings Goddard, an American engineer and physicist, considered one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics, was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, on October 5, 1882. He is recognized as the father of American rocketry and as one of the pioneers in the theoretical exploration of space. He dreamed of exploring the Earth’s upper atmosphere and, ultimately, space using rocket propulsion. Although his work was revolutionary, he received little public support for his research. Following his theoretical work on the physics of rocketry, he began experimenting with different rocket engines. Believing that liquid propellants offered the most promise, in 1926 he successfully launched the world’s first liquid-fu...

 SpaceShipOne. The r ecord breaking plane.   SpaceShipOne aircraft in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, NASM Original Photography, NASM Acc. 2012-0026.   SpaceShipOne is an experimental air-launched rocket-powered aircraft with sub-orbital spaceflight capability using a hybrid rocket motor. Its mother ship was named "White Knight". Both craft were developed and flown by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which was a joint venture between Paul Allen (1953–2018) and Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's (b. 1943) aviation company.    With SpaceShipOne, private enterprise crossed the threshold into human spaceflight, previously the domain of government programs. The SpaceShipOne team aimed for a simple, robust, and reliable vehicle design that could make affordable space travel and tourism possible. SpaceShipOne won the $10 million Ansari X Prize for repeated flights in a priva...

 Luna 3 and Ye-3. To the far side of the Moon.   Model of Luna 3 lunar probe. Credit: RKK Energiya   After successfully completing, with Luna 2, the goal of sending the impact probe to the Moon in September 1959, the next objective for the Soviet OKB-1 bureau was to obtain photographs of the far side of the Moon, which can never be observed from Earth. The Ye-2A No. 1 spacecraft that has achieved this goal was officially named in the Soviet press as the Automatic Interplanetary Station (Russian: Автоматическая межпланетная станция ). The probe was retroactively renamed Luna 3 in 1963.    The Ye-2A (Russian: E-2A ) spacecraft was a cylindrically shaped canister with hemispherical ends and a wide flange near the top end. The probe was 130 cm long and 120 cm at its maximum diameter at the flange. Most of the cylindrical secti...

 Aggregat 4. The first rocket in space.     Launch of Aggregat 4 from Peenemünde on October 3, 1942. Credit: NASM  The first successful test flight of the German Aggregat 4 (A4) ballistic missile, later known as the V-2, with the prototype number V-4, took place from Prüfstand VII in Peenemünde on the island of Usedom, off the Baltic coast of Germany on October 3, 1942.      It was the third test launch of the A4 rocket. The rocket engine burned for 58 seconds. The launch was too steep due to pitch program error, but otherwise successful. The prototype rocket reached an altitude of 85–90 kilometers (according to another source 84.5 kilometres), and traveled approximately 190 kilometers downrange. It was described at the time as the first rocket to reach the edge of space, though not according to the modern FAI definition of the ...