Our interest in space and its technology

The urge to learn more about the space surrounding the earth has been strong throughout mankind's recorded history, the incentive coming sometimes from primitive religion, sometimes from scientific curiosity, and ofttimes from a love of natural beauty. Today we can add to these the incentive of our newly acquired capability of penetrating into this space with instrumented and manned vehicles. We already know much about the solar system and a little about the universe beyond. We have some knowledge of the physical existence and the motion of the planets and their satellites, the asteroids, the comets and the meteors; the composition of these bodies is also somewhat known. The nature of the electromagnetic and particle radiations from the sun and extra solar system sources are less completely known and will be the continuing objective of some of our early scientific explorations of solar space.