Outer space has (51) __________ man

Outer space has (51) __________ mankind ever since we first gazed upward. It was easy enough to see stars in the night sky (52) __________ the naked eyes and many (53) __________ civilizations also noticed that certain groups appeared to form familiar shapes. They used these constellations to help with navigation and as a means of predicting the seasons and making calendars. Ancient astronomers also perceived points of light that moved. They believed they were wandering stars and the word “planet” was (54) __________ from the Greek word for “wanderers”. For much of human history, it was also believed that the Earth was the center of the Universe and that the planets circled the Earth, and that falling meteorites and solar eclipses were (55) __________ of disaster.
It wasn’t until the 16th century that Polish mathematician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus presented a mathematical model of how the sun actually moved around the Earth, challenging the (56) __________ understanding of how the solar system worked. The Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei then used a telescope to prove this theory to be correct.
Many technological advances have allowed us to probe (57) __________ space since then, and one of the most pioneering was when the first manned spacecraft, the Apollo 11, successfully (58) __________ gravity and touched down on the moon’s surface. Nevertheless, much of our research must be done from far greater distances. The Hubble Space Telescope was carried into orbit by a space shuttle in April 1990 and it has allowed cosmologists to gather incredible data.
Most (59) __________, it has provided a great deal of evidence to support the Big Bang Theory, that is, the idea that the Universe originated as a hot, (60) __________ state at a certain time in the past and has continued to expand since then.