Technology Drives Advancements in Astronomy

Astronomy is a relatively new field of research. Galileo first looked at the stars using a telescope some 400 years ago, and the earliest skywatchers followed suit soon. However, until the mid-20th century, not much was known about our solar system or the planets it contained, not to mention what lies beyond it. Since, rapid advancements in technology have produced such a massive wealth of data, that we are currently flooded with information collected from a myriad of observatories, telescopes, spacecrafts and sensors placed throughout the solar system.

Speaking about the late 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, Joseph Burn, a planetary scientist at Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, say that there was no technology worthy of mention, as far as astronomical studies went. “We knew nothing about any place out there, basically. We had telescopic observations of the Moon, but you go much beyond that, even down to fundamental things, such as how rapidly planets rotate – we had no knowledge of the spins of three of the planets, we were wrong on a couple of others,” he tells Space in an interview. “We didn't know very many facts at all,” he adds.

The earliest days of NASA's space exploration plans were not a very good time for science, the expert recalls. He says that a lot of emphasis was at the time placed on beating the Russians' record of placing the first artificial satellite in Earth's orbit. It was only with the advent of the Voyager mission that scientific data on the solar system really began pouring in. “Many of today's leaders in solar system exploration matured as scientists involved in those missions,” he writes in a paper published in the latest issue of the esteemed scientific journal Nature.

Galileo and Cassini were missions that followed soon, in 1989 and 1997, respectively. They too sent back invaluable data of Jupiter and Saturn, and Cassini continues to function to this day. But one of the most important things that changes was the old-time hypothesis that space was a calm, unchanging place. Instead, all missions sent to the solar system revealed a system that is constantly changing, and in which all elements influence each other to some extent. “If you take a long-term perspective, space is a pretty violent place. Everything is alive out there in its own way, it seems,” Burns believes.