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History
The first published mathematical study of the possibility of ( a, an, the ) artificial satellite ( was, were, has been ) Newton's cannonball, a thought experiment in A Treatise of the System of the World by Isaac Newton (1687). The first fictional depiction of a satellite being launched into orbit ( was, were, has been ) a short story by Edward Everett Hale, The Brick Moon.[3][4] The idea surfaced again in Jules Verne's The Begum's Fortune (1879).