Space Exploration Posters, Prints and Charts
for social studies and science classrooms, home schoolers, theme decor.

Telescope - Inventions that Changed the World

. . . The invention of the telescope completely altered mankind's view of the universe. With the telescope, scientists could see that other planets existed. They could see that the sun was only one of billions of stars in the galaxy, and that the universe was filled with other galaxies. These discoveries helped people realize that Earth is NOT the center of the universe, and they raised the possibility that life might exist elsewhere. In a way, the invention of the telescope marked the beginning of human exploration of space. From the moment Galileo first aimed his telescope at the night sky, humans have longed to visit other worlds. And this longing continues to pull us toward the stars. <more text>

• Inventions That Changed the World posters

Liquid-Fuel Rocket
Robert H. Goddard
b. 10-5-1882; Worcester, MA
d. 8-10-1945, Baltimore, MD

It is hard to believe, but the most important flight in the history of space travel may have been the one that took place on a Massachusetts farm on March 16, 1926. The flight lasted only 2.5 seconds and reached a height of only 41 feet. But it marked the first successful test of a new invention – the liquid fuel rocket.

The very first rockets were probably made in China about 700 years ago. But these first rockets were little more than tubes filled with gunpowder. The idea that rockets would be propelled by liquid fuels first appeared in a 1903 paper on space travel written by a Russian school teacher named Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Like many great inventors, Tsiolkovsky was ahead of his time. He never was able to actually build his liquid-fuel rockets.

That task fell to one of the great unsung heroes of America's space program – Robert H. Goddard, shown here. Dr. Goddard had dreamed of space travel ever since he was a boy, and he was intrigued by Tsiolkovsky's theories. He set up a small laboratory in Massachusetts and with a handfull of assistants built the first working liquid-fueled rockets. It seems amazing today, but Dr. Goddard's successful rocket experiments drew little interest and no support from the government.

It was only after the Germans used Dr. Goddard's designs to build the V-2 rocket bomb that the U.S. government finally took notice. By the early 1960s, rockets like the one shown here were carrying men into space. And a mere forty-three years after that first short flight, the gigantic Saturn V lifted three U.S. astronauts into space and launched them on a journey to the moon.

We have probably only begun to see the potential of the rocket to change the world. The rocket has already opened up vast new horizons of knowledge to us and in the next century –who knows? – your own grandchildren or great grandchildren may be living in a colony on Mars. [text from no longer available poster]

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Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
b. 9-17-1857; Russian Empire
d. 9-19-1935

Because of a childhood illness Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, Russian scientist and pioneer of space travel, was nearly deaf. His thesis,"The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices", was published in 1903; he also wrote extensively on space and related subjects, including science fiction novels, earning a living as a math teacher.

FYI ~ The television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation honored him by naming a fictional space ship the K. E. Tsiolkovsky.

Wernher von Braun
b. 3-23-1912; Kingdom of Prussia
d. 6-16-1977; Alexandria, VA

Wernher von Braun, one of the most notable rocket scientist of the 20th century, developed the V-2 rocket for the German military during World War II. He was brought to the United States after the war to work on the intercontinental ballistic missile program (ICBM), then joined NASA as the director the the Marshall Space Flight Center developing the Saturn V launch vehicle.

Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite, was a 23 inch (585 mm) diameter shiny metal sphere, with four external radio antennae to broadcast radio pulses.

Launched into low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, it circled the Earth 15 times a day gathering and transmitting information about the upper atmosphere for 22 days. Sputnik was visible to the naked eye until it fell from orbit on 1-4-1958.

Sputnik brought the state of US science education into sharp focus and began the “Space Race”.

• Ten Days that Shook the Nation poster series

Eagle was the name given to the lunar module of the 1969 United States Apollo 11 mission. It was the first manned Earth vehicle to land on the Moon, 7-20-1969.

"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Buzz Aldrin

“That’s one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.” Neil Armstrong

First Man on the Moon
Monday, July 21, 1969

‘One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’

Triumph for Apollo Crew
Aldrin, Collins and Armstrong

(OTHER NEWS) -
Kennedy to be Charged - Senator Edward Kennedy is to charged after failing to report an accident in which a woman passenger in his car, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned when the car plunged off a bridge at Chappaquiddick .
Rolling Stone Mourned - The world of Rock and Roll mourns the death of Rolling Stone, Brian Jones, who drowned in his swimming pool earlier this month. The coronor declared that Mr. Jones' death was the result ‘of alcohol and drugs’.
Franco's Heir - Later this week, the Spanish leader General Franco is expected to mane Prince Juan Carlos, the son of the current pretender to the Spanish throne, as his heir as Head of State and the future King of Spain.

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The Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched 9-5-1977, is the farthest human-made object from Earth at 9.6 billion miles as of 8-10-2007.

Voyager I's original targets were the planets Jupiter and Saturn, is now detecting the conditions of the heliosheath and heliopause, the region between the Solar System and interstellar space.

Voyager is currently operational and the theromoelectric generators, which have far outlived their expected lifespan, are now projected to maintain communication with Earth till around 2020.

The first fully functional Shuttle Orbiter, the Columbia, was first launched on 4-12-1981.

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The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a telescope in orbit around the Earth named after astronomer Edwin Hubble. First conceived in 1946, the HST was launched in 1990.

EVA stands for extra vehicular activity: work done by an astronaut away from the Earth and outside of his or her spacecraft.

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Cassini - Huygens, a joint NASA/ESA/ASI robotic spacecraft mission studying the planet Saturn and its moons, was launched on October 15, 1997 and entered into orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004.

The spacecraft consists of two main elements: the NASA Cassini orbiter, named after the Italian-French astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, and the ESA Huygens probe, named after the Dutch astronomer, mathematician and physicist Christiaan Huygens.

Wife of Astronaut James A. Lovell listening to squawk box broadcast of endangered Apollo 13 Mission.

Mission to Mir

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