page_title: Benefits of space exploration
section_title: Knowledge of space
hierarchical_section_title: Benefits of space exploration / Direct benefits / Knowledge of space
context_page_description: At the end of the Cold War and the space race, a new rationale was made on the pragmatic use of space for improving life on Earth, with notable utilities such as satellite telecommunications, remote sensing, microgravity research and satellite navigation. Government, space programs began investing in practical outcomes for the public good. Therefore, the importance of measuring the socio-economic benefits of space activities steadily grew throughout the 1970s and 1980s, an era defined as "Mission to Planet Earth". These benefits continue into today's society as the privatization of space travel and space exploration continues to show scientific and socio-economic benefits to those around them.
context_section_description: Since Sputnik 1 entered orbit in 1957 to perform Ionospheric experiments, the human understanding of earth and space has increased. The list of missions to the moon begin as early as 1958 and continued into the current age. A few successful lunar missions, by the USSR, include missions such as, the Luna 1 spacecraft that completed the first flyby of the moon in 1959, the Luna 3 lunar probe that took the first pictures of the far side of the moon in 1959, the Luna 10 orbiter that was the first orbiter of the moon in 1966, and the Lunokhod 1 lunar rover in 1970, which was the first rover that explored the surface of a world beyond earth. The United States also added significant lunar first, such as Apollo 8 in 1968 is the first successful human mission to orbit the moon and the historic Apollo 11  when man first landed on the moon. Missions to the moon have collected samples of lunar materials and there are now multiple satellites such as ARTEMIS P1 that currently orbit the moon and collect data. 
  Telescopic satellites have captured millions of images of the universe since the introduction of satellites, such as the Mariner Space Satellites. The Mariner 4 space satellite in 1965 was the first successful satellite to capture up-close images of the planet Mars. Mariner missions 6 and 7 additionally mapped the poles of the Red planet and relayed further images of the surface. By the end of the Mariner missions in 1972, Mariner 9 spent almost a year in the Martian orbit (687 days), collected images of nearly 100% of the surface of the moon, and observed notable discoveries including the humongous Olympus Mons volcano, more than 4000 km of  Valles Marineris, and dust storms lasting over a month. Further missions since 1972, like the Viking project, Mars observer, Mars pathfinder, Mars climate orbiter, Deep Space 2, Mars Global surveyor, and Phoenix, have obtained understandings of the climate, flood plains, and rock samples on Mars.
  The Hubble Space Telescope has contributed more than 2 million observations of the universe that have been influential in understanding the magnitude of the universe since its introduction into orbit. The intense focus of Hubble is for observation. The Hubble has been used to discover galaxies and planets across the universe. It was pointed at a speck of black space for ten consecutive days and the resultant image, the Hubble Deep Field, revealed at least 1,500 galaxies in that small location in the sky. Views like this allow the realization of the size and scope of the larger universal understanding of the types and variances of galaxies out in space. The Hubble Space Telescope has cost about $12 billion in the last 30 years including the cost of five shuttle servicing missions, the information received by the astronomers monitoring the Hubble provides a better understanding that would not be possible on from earth telescopes.
caption: Hubble Deep Field
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