Survey of the Planets

Essay # 2397

Astronomy > Space Exploration

A look at the space age and how it has developed over time

2,285 words () | 6 sources | 1998 United States

Paper Summary:

A detailed survey of the planets. The author looks at the space age and how knowledge has developed over time. Includes a detailed discussion of each era from 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik to the present.

From the Paper:

"Think of how exciting it must have been to live in the days when the telescope was first turned to the heavens. Every part of the sky offered a new surprise. The planets were transformed from specs of light to globes with unique characteristics. Could there be a more thrilling time of planetary discovery than those days of Galileo and the first telescopes? Yes, we live in such a time. How could the glimpses those early telescopes gave compare in richness to the dozens upon dozens of photographs and storehouses full of other data collected in the past few decades? Thanks to the spacecraft, we have finally started to know the planets as real places, both like and unlike Earth."