4. Robert Hutchings Goddard Robert Goddard was an aerospace pioneer who designed the liquid-propellant rocket and made one of the first serious proposals for flight to the moon. Goddard received limited support for his research during his lifetime, but his work was later recognized and used extensively in the development of missiles and spacecraft

5. In the 1950s and 1960s Sergei Korolyov served as chief designer of Soviet space vehicles, including the first artificial orbiting Earth satellite, Sputnik 1. Because of his role in developing Soviet rockets during the Cold War, many of his accomplishments remained secret until his death in 1966.

6. A rocket blasts off from its launching pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Most of the rocket is filled with liquid fuel and a liquid oxidizing agent. The fuel and oxidizing agent mix and ignite in the combustion chamber; the presence of the oxidizing agent ensures that the fuel burns far more efficiently than it could if it depended on the surrounding air for oxygen

7. The Soviet space station complex Mir, seen here from an approaching spacecraft, was put into orbit on February 19, 1986. On March 22, 1995, Valeri Polyakov completed a stay of 437 days aboard Mir

8. Solid-Propellant Rocket When the fuel in a solid-propellant rocket is ignited, the gases formed during combustion are forced out the nozzle and the rocket moves forward. The fuel is called the grain and is often formed with a hollow core for longer burning

9. Here, at a McDonnell-Douglas aircraft assembly line, several large passenger airliners are in production. In the foreground, the wing infrastructure is fastened to a body section. Further on the assembly line, the tail section and engine mounts are added.

10. In order to observe celestial X-ray sources, a special kind of telescope must be designed and launched into orbit, because the Earth’s atmosphere absorbs X-rays from space. It is not feasible to make lenses to focus X-rays, because they cannot be refracted (bent) as ordinary light rays can. An X-ray telescope uses sets of nested, slightly tapering, cylinders to focus X-rays onto a detector

11. A fish-eye lens took this photograph of the flight deck of the space shuttle Columbia. The commander and pilot are shown seated at the instrument panel

12. The weightlessness of space makes it possible to move about with ease. Here, astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery play in the shuttle’s mid-deck. David Hilmers (left) uses his arms and legs to propel himself after George Nelson (right) and John Lounge (bottom.

13. missiles are shown in this war zone. The missile travelling towards the target helicopters is a command-guided missile. The air-to-air guided missile shown in the upper right corner is heat sensitive; its guidance mechanism homes in on the heat trail left by the target plane. Because it has no guidance system, a ballistic missile follows a trajectory determined by the angle at which it is fired.

15. The VOR station uses a central aerial to broadcast a continuous reference signal and four variable signal aerials that produce a beam rotating at 1800 rpm. The aircraft’s receiver compares the phases of the signals to determine the bearing of the plane and indicates whether the plane is to the left or right of the desired course.

17. An Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft carries advanced search radar systems for detecting enemy aircraft and missiles. The AWACS transmits information to control centres on land or on ships at sea and can call up fighter aircraft and other forces to deal with the threat.

18. V-2 Rocket First fired in 1942, the V-2 rocket was the first successful large liquid-propellant rocket. Developed by German engineer Wernher von Braun, the V-2 was used by the Germans to bombard England during World War II.

19. . Thrust to propel a rocket is based on Isaac Newton's third law of motion which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The principle of a rocket motor may be understood by considering the example of a closed container filled with a compressed gas. Within this container the gas exerts equal pressure on every point of its walls