Figure 9.1Space exploration has progressed from its modest beginnings to address fundamental questions such as the origin of the solar system. (a) Robert H. Goddard, one of the fathers of rocketry, fired this liquid oxygen–gasoline rocket on March 16, 1926, at Auburn, Massachusetts. (b) Seventy years later, on November 2, 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope (in orbit around Earth) took this stunning photograph of the Eagle Nebula. The dark, pillar-like structures are columns of cool hydrogen gas and dust that give birth to new stars.