Astronomy and Space Exploration
- January–September – Cosmologists from the Supernova Cosmology Project led by Saul Perlmutter and the High-z Supernova Search Team led by Adam Riess and Brian Schmidt publish evidence that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing.
- January 6 – The Lunar Prospector spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon and later finds evidence for frozen water on the moon's surface.
- February 26 – Total solar eclipse
- March 2 – Data sent from the Galileo spaceprobe indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice.
- March 5 – NASA announces that the Clementine probe orbiting the Moon has found enough water in polar craters to support a human colony and rocket-fuelling station.
- March 13 – Penumbral lunar eclipse
- July 5 – Japan launches a probe to Mars, and thus joins the United States and Russia as a space-exploring nation.
- August 8 – Penumbral lunar eclipse
- August 22 – Annular solar eclipse
- September 6 – Penumbral lunar eclipse
- October 29 – Space Shuttle Discovery blasts-off with 77-year old John Glenn on board, making him the oldest person to go into space. He became the first American to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962.
- November 20 – Zarya, the first module of the International Space Station, is launched.
- The first of four 8.4 m reflecting telescopes opens in the Very Large Telescope program of the European Southern Observatory at Cerro Paranal in Chile.
Read more about this topic: 1998 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 true gardener then brushes over the ground with slow and gentle hand, to liberate a space for breath round some favourite; but he is not thinking about destruction except incidentally. It is only the amateur like myself who becomes obsessed and rejoices with a sadistic pleasure in weeds that are big and bad enough to pull, and at last, almost forgetting the flowers altogether, turns into a Reformer.”
—Freya Stark (1893–1993)
“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)