History
In 1946, American theoretical astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer was the first to conceive the idea of a telescope in outer space, a decade before the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik.
Spitzer's proposal called for a large telescope that would not be hindered by Earth's atmosphere. After lobbying in the 1960s and 70s for such a system to be built, Spitzer's vision ultimately materialized into the world's first space-based optical telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched on April 20, 1990 by the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-31).
Read more about this topic: Space Telescopes
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“As I am, so shall I associate, and so shall I act; Caesar’s history will paint out Caesar.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)