V-2 rocket in the context of "Wunderwaffe"

Satellite images (also Earth observation imagery, spaceborne photography, or simply satellite photo) are images of Earth collected by imaging satellites operated by governments and businesses around the world. Satellite imaging companies sell images by licensing them to governments and businesses such as Apple Maps and Google Maps.

V-weapons, known in original German as Vergeltungswaffen (German pronunciation: [fɐˈgɛltʊŋsˌvafṇ], German: "retaliatory weapons", "reprisal weapons"), were a particular set of long-range artillery weapons designed for strategic bombing during World War II, particularly strategic bombing and aerial bombing of cities. They were the V-1, a pulsejet-powered cruise missile; the V-2, a liquid-fueled ballistic missile; and the V-3 cannon. Germany intended to use all of these weapons in a military campaign against Britain, though only the V-1 and V-2 were so used in a campaign conducted 1944–45. After the invasion of western Europe by the Allies, these weapons were also employed against targets on the mainland of Europe, mainly in France and Belgium. Strategic bombing with V-weapons killed approximately 18,000 people, mostly civilians. The cities of London, Antwerp and Liège were the main targets.

V-weapons formed part of the range of the so-called Wunderwaffen (superweapons, or "wonderweapons") of Nazi Germany.

MW 18014 was a German A-4 test rocket launched on 20 June 1944, at the Peenemünde Army Research Center in Peenemünde. It was the first man-made object to reach outer space, attaining an apogee of 176 kilometres (109 mi), well above the Kármán line that was established later as the lowest altitude of space. It was a vertical test launch, and was not intended to reach orbital velocity, so it returned and impacted Earth, making it the first sub-orbital spaceflight.

Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun (US: /ˈvɜːrnər vɒn ˈbraʊn/ VUR-nər von BROWN; German: [ˈvɛʁnheːɐ̯ fɔn ˈbʁaʊn]; 23 March 1912 – 16 June 1977) was a German-American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was a member of the Nazi Party and later the Allgemeine SS which supported his rocket work. He became the leading figure in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany, and later a pioneer of rocket and space technology in the US.

As a young man, von Braun worked in Nazi Germany's rocket development program. He helped design and co-developed the V-2 rocket at Peenemünde Army Research Center during World War II. The V-2 became the first artificial object to travel into space by crossing the Kármán line on 20 June 1944. Following the war, he was secretly moved to the United States, along with about 1,600 other German scientists, engineers, and technicians, as part of Operation Paperclip. He worked for the United States Army on an intermediate-range ballistic missile program, and he developed the rockets that launched the United States' first space satellite Explorer 1 in 1958. He worked with Walt Disney on a series of films, which popularized the idea of human space travel in the US and beyond from 1955 to 1957.

Gravity's Rainbow is a 1973 novel by the American writer Thomas Pynchon. The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military. In particular, it features the quest undertaken by several characters to uncover the secret of a mysterious device, the Schwarzgerät ('black device'), which is slated to be installed in a rocket with the serial number "00000".

Traversing a wide range of knowledge, Gravity's Rainbow crosses boundaries between high and low culture, between literary propriety and profanity, and between science and speculative metaphysics. It shared the 1974 US National Book Award for Fiction with A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Although selected by the Pulitzer Prize jury on fiction for the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Pulitzer Advisory Board was offended by its content, some of which was described as "'unreadable', 'turgid', 'overwritten', and in parts 'obscene'". No Pulitzer Prize was awarded for fiction that year. The novel was nominated for the 1973 Nebula Award for Best Novel.

On a July 9, 1946, suborbital V-2 rocket flight, fruit flies became the first living organisms to go to space, and on February 20, 1947, fruit flies safely returned from a suborbital space flight, which paved the way for human exploration. Years before sending mammals into space, such as the 1949 flight of the rhesus monkey Albert II, the Soviet space dogs, or humans, scientists studied Drosophila melanogaster (the common fruit fly) and its reactions to both radiation and space flight to understand the possible effects of space and a zero-gravity environment on humans. Starting in the 1910s, researchers conducted experiments on fruit flies because humans and fruit flies share many genes.

At the height of the Cold War and the Space Race, flies were sent on missions to space with great frequency, allowing scientists to study the nature of living and breeding in space. Scientists and researchers from the Soviet Union and the United States both used fruit flies for their research and missions. These flies were used to further the understanding of the effects of weightlessness on the cardiovascular system, the immune system, and the genes of astronauts.