Space research is scientific study carried out in outer space, and by studying outer space. From the use of space technology to the observable universe, space research is a wide research field. Earth science, materials science, biology, medicine, and physics all apply to the space research environment. The term includes scientific payloads at any altitude from deep space to low Earth orbit, extended to include sounding rocket research in the upper atmosphere, and high-altitude balloons. Chinese rockets were used in ceremony and as weaponry since the 13th century, but no rocket would overcome Earth's gravity until the latter half of the 20th century. Space-capable rocketry appeared simultaneously in the work of three scientists, in three separate countries. In Russia, Konstantin Tsiolkovski, in the United States, Robert Goddard, and in Germany, Hermann Oberth.

The United States and the Soviet Union created their own missile programs. The space research field evolved as scientific investigation based on advancing rocket technology.

In 1948–1949 detectors on V-2 rocket flights detected x-rays from the Sun.[1] Sounding rockets helped show us the structure of the upper atmosphere. As higher altitudes were reached, space physics emerged as a field of research with studies of Earths aurorae, ionosphere and magnetosphere. The first artificial satellite, Russian Sputnik 1, launched on October 4, 1957, four months before the United States first, Explorer 1. The first major discovery of satellite research was in 1958, when Explorer 1 detected the Van Allen radiation belts. Planetology reached a new stage with the Russian Luna programme, between 1959 and 1976, a series of lunar probes which gave us evidence of the Moons chemical composition, gravity, temperature, soil samples, the first photographs of the far side of the Moon by Luna 3, and the first remotely controlled robots (Lunokhod) to land on another planetary body.