Astronomy and Space Exploration
- August 7 - The United States launches Explorer 6 from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
- September 15 - Russian probe Luna 3 sends back first photos of the far side of Earth's Moon.
- September 19 - Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison establish the scientific rationale for SETI with the publishing of their seminal paper "Searching for Interstellar Communications" in Nature.
- November 24 - Yardymli meteorite makes a landfall in Azerbaijan.
- December 4 - Little Joe 2, a mission in the Mercury program, carries Sam the monkey into space.
- Coma Berenicids discovered.
Read more about this topic: 1959 In Science
Famous quotes containing the words astronomy, space and/or exploration:
“It is noticed, that the consideration of the great periods and spaces of astronomy induces a dignity of mind, and an indifference to death.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The woman’s world ... is shown as a series of limited spaces, with the woman struggling to get free of them. The struggle is what the film is about; what is struggled against is the limited space itself. Consequently, to make its point, the film has to deny itself and suggest it was the struggle that was wrong, not the space.”
—Jeanine Basinger (b. 1936)
“I call her old. She has one family
Whose claim is good to being settled here
Before the era of colonization,
And before that of exploration even.
John Smith remarked them as he coasted by....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)