The idea of exploring space has fascinated people for thousands of years. It was only in the last century, though, that someone figured out how to do it. In 1903, Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky worked out an equation that described how to send objects into orbit. His work helped spawn the first rockets. By the 1920s, rocket enthusiasts throughout the world were forming societies to study space exploration. Some of these groups became the ancestors of modern national and international space agencies.
The very nature of space is hostile to human beings. To live in it, we need to wear special suits and occupy sealed cabins with a supply of oxygen. Winged jet aircraft can fly at altitudes up to about 80,000 feet (24,400 meters). Rocket-powered vehicles that don’t require oxygen from the air can climb as high as 354,000 feet (1,079,000 meters), which is about a mile above the surface of Earth. That’s the point where you enter cislunar space, the region between Earth and the Moon. Interplanetary space stretches out from there to the planets of our solar system. And intergalactic space—unimaginably vast—lies between the galaxies of our universe.
Since the early days of the Space Race, which pitted the US and the Soviet Union against each other to demonstrate their technological superiority, humans have only ventured away from Earth’s orbit on a handful of missions. Those missions, which involved collaboration among national and international space agencies, produced landmark achievements such as the first satellites to orbit the Earth and the first landings on the Moon. The next step is space colonization, which will require more advanced technologies, such as materials that can withstand the cold of outer space and a technology for fusion energy.
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