9781422281420

Eyes on the Sky ▲ One of the key ways that people came to understand that fact was through telescopes. These devices use focused glass lenses to bring distant objects closer. To Galileo and the early sky watchers, telescopes were literally eye-open- ers. For the first time, people saw the surface of the moon. They saw how starlight shone. They saw sunspots and found planets—stars that did not move like stars. The first telescopes were used in the Netherlands in the 1500s. In the com- ing decades, improvements brought the heav- ens into greater focus. Flight? The idea of humans reaching those far-away places was the stuff of stories. There was no way for people to fly, let alone fly as high as the Moon or the stars. Pioneers of aviation , however, kept trying. Balloonists rose above the Earth. Men tried to invent flying machines. In 1903, the American brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright (left), succeeded in creating the first airplane. Less than a century later, flight would go from the Wrights’ humble glider-like craft to supersonic jets and rockets.

From Earth to the Moon The idea of travel to space inspired storytellers. Many cultures include myths about the stars, the Sun, and more. From ancient Greeks to Native Americans to South American civilizations, the “mysterious” objects in the sky were explained with stories and tales. The French writer Jules Verne continued that tradition in 1865 with his novel From the Earth to the Moon . Amazingly, he “predicted” many of the advances that future space travel would include, from multi-stage rockets to manned capsules to a type of radar. Of course, his space flyers used a Civil War cannon to aim at the Moon, so he didn’t get it all right!

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