Space Exploration Lecture Notes

Flashcards covering the definitions, key figures, and historical models of space exploration from the Unit E lecture notes.

Relationships

The connections and associations between properties, objects, people, and ideas, including the human community's connections with the world.

Space

A large 3-dimensional region that begins where the Earth's atmosphere ends.

Astronomy

The study of space.

Protoplanet Hypothesis

A theory stating that solar systems originate from rotating disks of dust coated in ice that slowly grow into planets after $90\%$ of the material compresses to form a sun.

Stone ribs, world pole, and overhead

Elements of a Pacific North West Aboriginal myth where a spinning 'world pole' resting on a woman named 'overhead' held up the night sky blanket.

Ursa Major

A constellation believed by the Algonquin, Iroquois, and Narragansett tribes to be a bear running from hunters.

Ra

The Ancient Egyptian Sun God who was carried in a sacred boat across the sky every day.

Mitt

A tool used by the Inuit in the high Arctic at arm's length against the horizon to determine when seal pups would be born.

Geocentric Model

A model used to explain the solar system where the Earth is the center and all other planets and the sun revolve around it.

Heliocentric Model

A model used to explain the solar system where the Sun is the center and all planets revolve around it.

Ellipse

An oval shape formed around two focal points, used to describe the actual path of planetary orbits.

Eudoxys

The individual who created the first geocentric model in 380 BCE.

Aristotle

A Greek philosopher (384-322 BCE) who revised the geocentric model to include 55 spheres and used mathematics rather than a telescope to calculate the sizes of bodies.

Nicolas Copernicus

A Renaissance astronomer (1530 AD) who proposed the heliocentric model and stated that rotation on an axis determined months and years.

Tycho Brahe

An astronomer (1546-1601) who made the most accurate measurements of his time but still believed the sun revolved around the earth.

Nova

A new star observed in 1604 that cast doubt on the geocentric model and provided evidence for Galileo to support the heliocentric model.

Galileo Galilei

The first person to use a telescope to look at solar bodies (1600 AD) and was imprisoned for sharing ideas that went against the church.

Johannes Kepler

A German astronomer who established three laws of planetary motion, the main one being that planets orbit in an elliptical pattern.

Sir Isaac Newton

The scientist who provided the first convincing evidence for a heliocentric model in 1687 using his laws of inertia and gravitational pull.