Space Exploration
- February 1 – Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates over Texas upon reentry killing all seven astronauts on board.
- June 2 – The first European Mars mission Mars Express launched.
- September 27 – The first European lunar mission Smart 1 launched.
- October 15 – The People's Republic of China launches Shenzhou 5, their first manned space mission.
- December 25 – Mars Express enters orbit around Mars. Its lander, Beagle 2 was to land on the surface but is lost (presumed crashed).
Read more about this topic: 2003 In Science
Famous quotes containing the words space and/or exploration:
“To play is nothing but the imitative substitution of a pleasurable, superfluous and voluntary action for a serious, necessary, imperative and difficult one. At the cradle of play as well as of artistic activity there stood leisure, tedium entailed by increased spiritual mobility, a horror vacui, the need of letting forms no longer imprisoned move freely, of filling empty time with sequences of notes, empty space with sequences of form.”
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Before the era of colonization,
And before that of exploration even.
John Smith remarked them as he coasted by....”
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