Nobody “discovered” space in a single moment or by a single person, because humans have always seen the night sky; what changed over time was our understanding of what space actually is.

Quick Scoop: So…who discovered space?

If you mean:

  • The sky and stars:
    Humans have looked at the stars since prehistoric times, long before written history, so there’s no first discoverer.
  • Space as a vast universe full of other galaxies:
    A key figure is Edwin Hubble , an American astronomer in the early 1900s.

In the 1920s, Hubble showed that the Andromeda “nebula” is actually another galaxy far outside the Milky Way, proving the universe is much bigger than our own galaxy.

He also found that galaxies are moving away from us, leading to the idea of an expanding universe.

  • Space as a place we can physically go to:
    In the 1950s–60s, rockets turned space from an idea into a destination.
* 1957: The Soviet Union launched **Sputnik 1** , the first artificial satellite.

* 1961: **Yuri Gagarin** became the first human in space.

* 1969: **Neil Armstrong** and **Buzz Aldrin** walked on the Moon in Apollo 11.

So, instead of one person “discovering space,” there’s a timeline:

  1. Ancient peoples: recognized stars and planets in the sky.
  2. Early modern astronomy (Galileo, etc.): realized Earth is a planet orbiting the Sun (not the center of everything).
  3. Edwin Hubble: showed other galaxies exist and that the universe is expanding.
  1. Space age: rockets, satellites, and astronauts turned space into a real place we can explore.

A simple way to remember it

You can think of it like this:

First we saw space, then we understood space, and finally we visited space.

No single person gets the title “the one who discovered space,” but Edwin Hubble is often called “the man who discovered the universe” because he proved there’s a vast cosmos beyond our galaxy.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.