الأصول الرياضية للفلسفة الطبيعية
The first published mathematical study of the possibility of an artificial satellite was Newton's cannonball, a thought experiment by Isaac Newton to explain the motion of natural satellites, in his "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" (1687). The first fictional depiction of a satellite being launched into orbit was a short story by Edward Everett Hale, "The Brick Moon" (1869). The idea surfaced again in Jules Verne's "The Begum's Fortune" (1879).