rocket: Quick Facts

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Soviet launch vehicle rocket engines

Ares I-X test rocket; Constellation program

Black-and-white image: rocket launch.

Pegasus XL rocket

Spacecraft launch against clear blue sky.

propellant rockets

Discovery liftoff, 1985

Ariane 5G launch vehicle

space shuttle main engine flow

An astronaut in space waves while surrounded by floating plastic debris including bottles, a bag, a straw, and a plate near Earth's orbit.

How rockets work: Newton's third law of motion explained

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launch vehicle thrust-vector control sounding rocket staged rocket Satellite Launch Vehicle 3 booster H-IIA Agena Centaur Jupiter-C Earth satellite spy satellite unidentified flying object Is Comet 3I/ATLAS an alien spacecraft?Infographic: Spacecraft of the Apollo Program Unidentified Flying Objects: What We Know

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Key People

Theodore von Kármán

Theodore von Kármán

American engineer

Jack Parsons

Jack Parsons

American rocket scientist and chemist

Wernher von Braun

Wernher von Braun

German engineer

Robert Goddard

Robert Goddard

American professor and inventor

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Hermann Oberth

German scientist

Pickering, William Hayward; Johnson, Lyndon

William Hayward Pickering

American engineer and physicist

Yuri Gagarin and Sergei Korolev

Sergei Korolev

Soviet scientist

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Samuel Kurtz Hoffman

American engineer

Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin Eduardovich

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

Russian scientist

Glushko, Valentin Petrovich

Valentin Petrovich Glushko

Soviet scientist

Nicolaus Copernicus. Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543) Polish astronomer. In 1543 he published, forward proof of a Heliocentric (sun centered) universe. Coloured stipple engraving published London 1802. De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri vi.

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