The Scientist

Galileo- Galileo's discoveries about the Moon, Jupiter's moons, Venus, and sunspots supported the idea that the Sun - not the Earth - was the center of the Universe, as was commonly believed at the time. Galileo's work laid the foundation for today's modern space probes and telescopes.

William Herschel- discovered the planet Uranus in 1781. This was the first planet to be discovered since prehistoric times. Uranus' moons, Titania and Oberon, and Saturn's moons, Enceladus and Mimas, were discovered in 1789.

Giuseppe Piazzi- was a mathematician and astronomer, most famed for his discovery of Ceres between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. He also did important work on the proper motions of stars.

Henrietta Leavitt- Henrietta Swan Leavitt's contribution to the field of astronomy is that she gave us the tools to map out the stars in the universe. She discovered the correlation between Period and Luminosity. This helped turn the sky into a three-dimensional map allowing astronomers to solve the unknown in the equation: Distance.

John Krauss- Krauss is quoting Karl Jansky. Karl Guthe Jansky is known as the father of radio astronomy because in 1933 he discovered that the center of our Milky Way Galaxy emits radio waves.

Yevgeniy  Shabarov- scientist/ car tasker of Laika

Oleg Gazenko- Gazenko took a prominent part in several biological tests regarding space flight projects. He trained and supervised the animals used in the Sputnik 2 project. Sputnik 2 was the second spacecraft launched into Earth orbit, on November 3, 1957, and the first to carry a living animal, a dog named Laika.

Yuri Gagarin -Yuri Gagarin from the Soviet Union was the first human in space.

John f. Kennedy- 35th President of the United States

Neil Armstrong- the first man to walk on the moon

Donna Shirley- Selected to head the Mars Exploration Program in 1994, Shirley was the first woman to manage a NASA program. During this assignment, she oversaw the flight of Pathfinder and Sojourner to Mars in 1997.

Ann Druyan- From her work in the 1970s as the Creative Director for NASA's Voyager Interstellar Messaging Project

George Smoot- His discovery confirmed the big bang theory of the universe's origin, explaining how that event could have led to the cosmos looking as it does today. The minuscule variations Smoot found were the primordial seeds of the planets, stars and galaxies that exist now.