Bell J. The Space Book: From the Beginning to the End of Time, 250 Milestones in the History of Space & Astronomy

Sterling, 2018. — 797 p. — ISBN 978-1-45493558-2.The Space Book: From the Beginning to the End of Time, 250 Milestones in the History of Space & Astronomy.Space is vast and ever-changing. In the five years since the first edition of The
Space Book was published, new robotic space missions have been launched to a variety of solar system destinations, ongoing missions have made exciting new discoveries, hundreds of new planets have been discovered around nearby Sunlike stars, astrophysicists have discovered new ways to study the distant universe, and a panoply of future space-related missions and experiments have been approved to move forward by space agencies around the world. The landscape of space science and exploration has changed significantly as well, with small entrepreneurial aerospace companies, such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, entering the market as viable producers of their own reusable launch vehicles, and other companies developing or implementing ways to map the Earth or prospect for minerals and water on nearby asteroids using CubeSats—tiny spacecraft no larger than a cereal box. It continues to be a golden age of space exploration, with no end in sight.Birth of the Universe
c. 13.7 Billion BCE Big Bang
c. 13.7 Billion BCE Recombination Era
c. 13.5 Billion BCE First Stars
c. 13.3 Billion BCE Milky Way
c. 5 Billion BCE Solar Nebula
c. 4.6 Billion BCE Violent Proto-Sun
c. 4.6 Billion BCE Birth of the Sun
c. 4.5 Billion BCE Mercury
c. 4.5 Billion BCE Venus
c. 4.5 Billion BCE Earth
c. 4.5 Billion BCE Mars
c. 4.5 Billion BCE Main Asteroid Belt
c. 4.5 Billion BCE Jupiter
c. 4.5 Billion BCE Saturn
c. 4.5 Billion BCE Uranus
c. 4.5 Billion BCE Neptune
c. 4.5 Billion BCE Pluto and the Kuiper Belt
c. 4.5 Billion BCE Birth of the Moon
c. 4.1 Billion BCE Late Heavy Bombardment
c. 3.8 Billion BCE Life on Earth
550 Million BCE Cambrian Explosion65 Million BCE Dinosaur-Killing Impact
200,000 BCE Homo Sapiens
c. 50,000 BCE Arizona Impact
Observing the Heavens
c. 5000 BCE Birth of Cosmology
c. 3000 BCE Ancient Observatories
c. 2500 BCE Egyptian Astronomy
c. 2100 BCE Astronomy in China
c. 500 BCE Earth Is Round!
c. 400 BCE Greek Geocentrism
c. 400 BCE Western Astrology
c. 280 BCE Sun-Centered Cosmos
c. 250 BCE Eratosthenes Measures the Earth
c. 150 BCE Stellar Magnitude
c. 100 BCE First Computer
45 BCE Julian Calendar
c. 150 Ptolemy’s Almagest
185 Chinese Observe “Guest Star”
c. 500 Aryabhatiya
c. 700 Finding Easter
c. 825 Early Islamic Astronomy
c. 964 Andromeda Sighted
c. 1000 Experimental Astrophysics
c. 1000 Mayan Astronomy
1054 “Daytime Star” Observed
c. 1230 De Sphaera
c. 1260 Large Medieval Observatories
c. 1500 Early Calculus
1543 Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus
1572 Brahe’s “Nova Stella”
1582 Gregorian Calendar
1596 Mira Variables
1600 Bruno’s On the Infinite Universe and Worlds
c. 1608 First Astronomical Telescopes
1610 Galileo’s Starry Messenger
1610 Io
1610 Europa
1610 Ganymede
1610 Callisto
1610 Orion Nebula “Discovered”
1619 Three Laws of Planetary Motion
1639 Venus Transits the Sun
1650 Mizar-Alcor Sextuple System
1655 Titan
1659 Saturn Has Rings
1665 Great Red Spot
1665 Globular Clusters
1671–1672 Iapetus and Rhea
1676 Speed of Light
1682 Halley’s Comet
1684 Tethys and Dione
1684 Zodiacal Light
1686 Origin of Tides
1687 Newton’s Laws of Gravity and Motion
1718 Proper Motion of Stars
1757 Celestial Navigation
1764 Planetary Nebulae
1771 Messier Catalog
1772 Lagrange Points
1781 Discovery of Uranus
1787 Titania and Oberon
1789 Enceladus
1789 Mimas
1794 Meteorites Come from Space
1795 Encke’s Comet
1801 Ceres
1807 Vesta
1814 Birth of Spectroscopy
1838 Stellar Parallax
1839 First Astrophotographs
1846 Discovery of Neptune
1846 Triton
1847 Miss Mitchell’s Comet
1848 Doppler Shift of Light
1848 Hyperion
1851 Foucault’s Pendulum
1851 Ariel and Umbriel
1857 Kirkwood Gaps
1859 Solar Flares
1859 Search for Vulcan
1862 White Dwarfs
1866 Source of the Leonid Meteors
1868 Helium
1877 Deimos
1877 Phobos
1887 End of the Ether
1893 Star Color = Star Temperature
1895 Milky Way Dark Lanes
1896 Greenhouse Effect
1896 Radioactivity
1899 Phoebe
1900 Quantum Mechanics
1901 Pickering’s “Harvard Computers”
1904 Himalia
1905 Einstein’s “Miracle Year”
1906 Jupiter’s Trojan Asteroids
1906 Mars and Its Canals
1908 Tunguska Explosion
1908 Cepheid Variables and Standard Candles
1910 Main Sequence
1918 Size of the Milky Way
1920 “Centaur” Asteroids
1924 Eddington’s Mass-Luminosity Relation
1926 Liquid-Fueled Rocketry
1927 The Milky Way Rotates
1929 Hubble’s Law
1930 Discovery of Pluto
1931 Radio Astronomy
1932 The Öpik-Oort Cloud
1933 Neutron Stars
1933 Dark Matter
1936 Elliptical Galaxies
1939 Nuclear Fusion
1945 Geosynchronous Satellites
1948 Miranda
1955 Jupiter’s Magnetic Field
1956 Neutrino Astronomy
The Space Age
1957 Sputnik 1
1958 Earth’s Radiation Belts
1958 NASA and the Deep Space Network
1959 Far Side of the Moon
1959 Spiral Galaxies
1960 SETI
1961 First Humans in Space
1963 Arecibo Radio Telescope
1963 Quasars
1964 Cosmic Microwave Background
1965 Black Holes
1965 Hawking’s “Extreme Physics”
1966 Venera 3 Reaches Venus
1967 Pulsars
1967 Study of Extremophiles
1969 First on the Moon
1969 Second on the Moon
1969 Astronomy Goes Digital
1970 Organic Molecules in Murchison Meteorite
1970 Venera 7 Lands on Venus
1970 Lunar Robotic Sample Return
1971 Fra Mauro Formation
1971 First Mars Orbiters
1971 Roving on the Moon
1972 Lunar Highlands
1972 Last on the Moon
1973 Gamma-Ray Bursts
1973 Pioneer 10 at Jupiter
1976 Vikings on Mars
1977 Voyager “Grand Tour” Begins
1977 Uranian Rings Discovered
1978 Charon
1979 Active Volcanoes on Io
1979 Jovian Rings
1979 An Ocean on Europa?
1979 Gravitational Lensing
1979 Pioneer 11 at Saturn
1980 Cosmos: A Personal Voyage
1980, 1981 Voyager Saturn Encounters
1981 Space Shuttle
1982 Rings Around Neptune
1984 Circumstellar Disks
1986 Voyager 2 at Uranus
1987 Supernova 1987 A
1988 Light Pollution
1989 Voyager 2 at Neptune
1989 Walls of Galaxies
1990 Hubble Space Telescope
1990 Venus Mapped by Magellan
1992 Mapping the Cosmic Microwave Background
1992 First Extrasolar Planets
1992 Kuiper Belt Objects
1992 Asteroids Can Have Moons
1993 Giant Telescopes
1994 Comet SL-9 Slams into Jupiter
1994 Brown Dwarfs
1995 Planets Around Other Suns
1995 Galileo Orbits Jupiter
1996 Life on Mars?
1997 “Great Comet” Hale-Bopp
1997 253 Mathilde
1997 First Rover on Mars
1997 Mars Global Surveyor
1998 International Space Station
1998 Dark Energy
1999 Torino Impact Hazard Scale
1999 Chandra X-ray Observatory
2000 An Ocean on Ganymede?
2000 NEAR at Eros
2001 Solar Neutrino Problem
2001 Age of the Universe
2001 Genesis Catches Solar Wind
2003 Spitzer Space Telescope
2004 Spirit and Opportunity on Mars
2004–2017 Cassini Explores Saturn
2004 Stardust Encounters Wild-2
2005 Deep Impact: Tempel-1
2005 Huygens Lands on Titan
2005 Hayabusa at Itokawa
2006 Demotion of Pluto
2007 Habitable Super Earths?
2009 Kepler Mission
2010 SOFIA
2010 Rosetta Flies by 21 Lutetia
2010 Comet Hartley-2
2011 MESSENGER at Mercury
2011 Dawn at Vesta
2011 ALMA
2012 Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover
2013 Chelyabinsk Fireball
2015 LightSail-1
2015 Dawn at Ceres
2015 Pluto Revealed!
2016 Juno at Jupiter
2016 ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter
2016 Gravitational Waves
2017 North American Solar Eclipse
2017 Planets around TRAPPIST-1
2018 InSight to Mars
2019 James Webb Space Telescope
Our Future
2020 Start of Mars Sample Return
~2022 Europa Clipper
2022 Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer
~2025? WFIRST
2029 Apophis Near Miss
~2035–2050 First Humans on Mars?
~2050? Breakthrough Starshot
~100 Million Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy Collision
~1 Billion Earth’s Oceans Evaporate
~3–5 Billion Collision with Andromeda
~5–7 Billion End of the Sun
~1014 Last of the Stars
The End of Time: How Will the Universe End?