Technicians use
an overhead
crane to lower
NASA’s Juno
spacecraft onto
a fueling stand
where the
spacecraft will
be loaded with
the propellant
necessary for
its mission to
Jupiter. The
image was taken
at Astrotech’s
Hazardous
Processing Facility
in Titusville, Fla.,
on June 27, 2011.
“We shall never cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
— T.S. Eliot
Pushing
the limits
Space exploration reveals
our Solar System’s secrets
A
By STEVE EDBERG
Guest Contributor
merica’s National Aeronautics and
Space Administration, NASA, has
been exploring space for more
than 55 years. Pioneer 4, its first
Pioneer 4
successful effort to venture into
the Solar System – the Moon and
beyond – came just over a year
after its first successful mission
to Earth orbit with Explorer 1.
The history of NASA’s, and the
rest of the world’s, exploration
beyond Earth orbit is filled with
both failure and success — a true
human endeavor.
Humanity’s robotic exploration
of the Solar System can be
characterized by the stages it
COURTESY OF NASA follows.
Remote observations are made
by robotic observatories in geocentric
(Earth-centered) or heliocentric (Suncentered) orbits. Often left out of the (