Map-making, navigation and the measurement of time. The study of astronomy has been essential to developing our understanding of the universe, and between the 9th and 14th centuries, scholars from the Islamic world like those in Abbasid Caliph Al-Ma'mun's court and the Persian astronomers Al Tusi and Al Biruni - consolidated and refined the astronomy of earlier civilisations and came up with ideas that have influenced space science right through to the present day.

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