Nicholas Copernicus is greatly known to introduce the heliocentric theory, stating that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the universe.  Going off of the Copernicus theory, Giordiano Bruno threw out the idea that the Sun is a star containing its own planets.  After being accused of heresay by the Roman Inquisition, Bruno was later burned at the stake.  Johannes Kepler later came out with his idea that the planets had an elliptical, not circular, orbit around the Sun.  With this knowledge, he was able to decipher the orbital period of the planets.  Galileo Galilei improved the first model of the telescope and pointed it up towards the sky for the first time, which led him to eventually discovering the moons of Jupiter.  Galileo was put under house arrest and was forced to write a retraction statement.  If it was not for astronomers such as these risking their lives and reputations to bring upon us their great knowledge, we would not have accomplished the milestones we can currently boast about. 

To the left is a picture of Bruno at his court appearance with the Roman Inquisition before he was found guilty.

To the right is the Copernican system that Copernicus envisioned showing the Sun was the center of the universe.










It wasn't until almost sixty years ago that the "Space Race" between the Soviet Union and the United States began.  The initial research done by astronomers in the 16th century was ignored for a couple hundred years before it became a major asset in our voyages into space.  Sputnit, Explorer 1, and the Mercury Program were the first objects that were put into space and would not have been possible had it not been for Isaac Newton's theories on gravitation.  Newton's Laws of Motion also allow us to solve for orbital insertion, speed, and altitude, to determine how fast and how high a shuttle must go to achieve orbit.  Newton invented calculus, which applies to nearly every facet of our lives, such as manufacturing, economics, statistics, space, etc.  Today, Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion are used everyday by space stations to search for exoplanets.  It was recently introduced that the Jupiter moons discovered by Galileo many years ago will be explored by NASA and the European space agencies by 2020, called the Europa Jupiter System Mission.

The video clip is the launch of the shuttle carrying the first man to walk on the moon.

Throughout the span of our history, the process of discovery has been fraught with disbelief, criticism, even danger.  The forward-thinkers of the renaissance did not escape this fate, but opened up a new era of scientific thought that would make our modern world possible.  Because of the courage and innovation of figures such as these, our society has become accepting of the necessity of the occasional paradigm shift.  The early masters of the physical sciences taught us that, despite conflicts with religious or societal conventions, the failure of our accepted models to match observation require us to revise said models.  This is the basis of scientific methodology and the primary force that drives the unprecedented progress that we enjoy today.