Issue 225 – June 2025Non-Fictionby Andrew LiptakOn the evening of January 7th, 1610, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope to the sky and began viewing the planet Jupiter. He proposed a new, heliocentric model of the solar system, which German astronomer Johannes Kepler expanded upon in 1609, presenting a new model that introduced his laws of planetary motion. While the lunar landings captured much of the public’s attention, planetary scientists had long been working on plans to send probes to the outer solar system. The discoveries that both Voyager probes made of Jupiter and the other outer planets transformed our understanding of the solar system. But in other instances, scientific realism stuck, and these scientific discoveries percolated into the pages of science fiction stories.