In the years since 1972 when the last manned expedition to the moon occurred onboard Apollo 17, tremendous progress has been made in almost all aspects of the space program. The successes of the space program has increased interest in outer space among young people everywhere who aspire to learn about Astronomy, Astrophysics and space travel.
During this period, a permanent presence has been established in space aboard the International Space Station (ISS), with all major coutries participating, including NASA, Russia's Roscosmos, and The European Space Agency. China's National Space Administration has its own space station, and like the United states has landed unmanned vehicles on Mars and the moon. Commercial organizations such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance are developing Space Technology, along with NASA to restore the United States' domestic space launch capability.
Not only these programs developed a low earth orbit (LEO) launch capability, but every planet in our solar system been visited by spacecrafts, returning voluminous amounts of data about our solar system. Also, programs such as Kepler and K2, The Hubble Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Satellite System (TESS) have identified over 4500 Exoplanets. Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars outside of our solar system.
The Asteroid Belt is being surveyed for mining of minerals that may be exhausted on earth. There is also Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) asteroid watch program called the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, which tracks comets and asteroids that come close to Earth's orbit and is designed to prevent a catastrophic collision with the earth. These are all exciting programs for students with an interest in outer space.
Advice for choosing a Telescope