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Article: Space Probe
- Article from:
- World of Earth Science
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Space probe
A
space
probe is any unmanned instrumented spacecraft designed to carry out physical studies of space environment. As distinguished from satellites orbiting Earth under the influence of gravitational attraction, a space probe is rocketed into space with sufficient speed to achieve escape velocity (the velocity needed to obtain parabolic or hyperbolic orbit) and to reach a trajectory aimed at a pre-selected target.
The first recorded mention of a possibility of an unmanned probe dates back to 1919, when American physicist R. H. Goddard (1882
–
1945) suggested a series of space based experiments. However, in large part to Goddard's advancements in rocketry, it took only ...