Space & Astronomy

"Cosmos" author and astronomer who brought the universe to billions; popularised the search for extraterrestrial life

"Missile Man of India" and 11th President; led India's nuclear and space programmes

Father of modern astronomy; first to use a telescope to observe the sky; proved Earth orbits the Sun

Proposed that Earth orbits the Sun — the Copernican Revolution that changed humanity's view of itself

Greatest physicist of the modern era; decoded black holes; survived ALS for 55 years while changing physics

Indian-American astrophysicist; Nobel Prize winner who calculated how stars die

Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet in 2006; there are 5 recognised dwarf planets in our Solar System

Solar System's largest planet; 2.5× mass of all other planets combined; "The Great Shield"

"The Red Planet"; most explored planet after Earth; prime target for future human colonisation

The only known planet to harbour life; 4.5 billion years old; third rock from the Sun

The ringed planet; spectacular rings of ice and rock; less dense than water

Earth's only natural satellite; formed 4.5 billion years ago; site of humanity's greatest journey

Our star; 1.4 million km wide; the source of all energy, light and life on Earth

Father of the Indian Space Programme; founded ISRO; built India's first rocket launch facility

European Space Agency plus JAXA, CNSA and Roscosmos — the global space community

Indian Space Research Organisation; founded 1969; world's most cost-efficient space agency

National Aeronautics and Space Administration; established 1958; led humanity to the Moon and beyond

Elon Musk's rocket company; made reusable rockets mainstream; transports astronauts to the ISS

Mars colonisation, space tourism, asteroid mining and humanity's multiplanetary future

Gaganyaan, LUPEX, Shukrayaan and India's ambition to be a top-3 space power by 2047

The historic first steps: first woman, first Indian, first spacewalk, first reusable rocket

First artificial satellite launched by USSR (1957); the beep that started the Space Race

The origin of everything: 13.8 billion years ago, all space, time, matter and energy began in a single event

First human in space; orbited Earth on 12 April 1961 in just 108 minutes; a global hero

July 20, 1969: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon

NASA's return to the Moon programme; first woman and first person of colour to walk on the Moon

India's Moon missions; Chandrayaan-3 became the first spacecraft to land near the Moon's south pole

Largest human-made structure in space; 460 tonnes; continuously inhabited since November 2000

India's space programme milestones — from Aryabhata (1975) to Aditya-L1 (2024)

India's Mars Orbiter Mission; reached Mars in first attempt — a world record — at a cost of ₹450 crore

NASA's robotic explorers; Perseverance (2021) is searching for signs of ancient Martian life

Launched 1977; Voyager 1 is the most distant human-made object — 24 billion km from Earth

Regions where gravity is so strong that even light cannot escape; laboratories for extreme physics

The great mystery: 95% of the universe is invisible dark matter and dark energy that we cannot detect

Planets outside our Solar System; 5,600+ confirmed; some in the "habitable zone" with liquid water

Launched 1990; transformed astronomy with 1.5 million observations; looks 13.4 billion years back in time

NASA's $10 billion observatory launched 2021; sees the universe's first stars 13.6 billion years ago

From nebula to red giant to white dwarf or supernova — the birth, life and death of stars

Our home galaxy; 200–400 billion stars in a spiral disc 100,000 light-years across