Discovery and exploration of the Solar System is observation, visitation, and increase in knowledge and understanding of Earth's "cosmic neighborhood". This includes the Sun, the Earth and its Moon, major planets including Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, their satellites, as well as smaller bodies including Comets, Asteroids, and dust.
The Solar System — our Sun’s system of planets, moons, and smaller debris — is humankind’s cosmic backyard. Small by factors of millions compared to interstellar distances, the spaces between the planets are daunting, but technologically surmountable —NASARead more about Discovery And Exploration Of The Solar System: History, Telescopic Observations, Observations By Spacecraft, Manned Exploration, Sample Return, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words solar system, discovery, exploration, solar and/or system:
“Our civilization has decided ... that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men.... When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“For women who do not love us, as for the “disappeared”, knowing that we no longer have any hope does not prevent us form continuing to wait. We live on our guard, on watch; women whose son has gone asea on a dangerous exploration imagine at any minute, although it has long been certain that he has perished, that he will enter, miraculously saved, and healthy.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Our civilization has decided ... that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men.... When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Each generation’s job is to question what parents accept on faith, to explore possibilities, and adapt the last generation’s system of values for a new age.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)