Once in a lifetime getaway – art to inspire space tourism

Whilst space travel and tourism may still be a remote fantasy, NASA is keen to keep it close to our minds and hearts.

The Grand Tour for NASA Image by Invisible Creatures

Its Jet Propulsion Laboratory has released a series of retro-inspired prints that seek to depict how space tourism may be marketed in the future for a calendar entitled Visions of the Future. The project was carried out by design company Invisible Creatures, who were inspired by real life space exploration events when it came to the design of their posters. Writing on their blog, they explained one of the posters, entitled  The Grand Tour and captioned “A once in a lifetime getaway.” They talked about a NASA tour of the solar system that waited for a once in lifetime alignment of the planets, to go on a grand tour, essentially inspired by NASA’s Voyager mission: “The twin spacecraft revealed stunning details about Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – using each planet’s gravity to send them on to the next destination.”

Mars for Nasa Image by Invisible Creatures

The Mars tour is captioned “Visit the historic sites” and refers of course to NASA’s Mars Mission, which is currently working on proving whether it is possible to maintain forms of life on the planet. The team at Invisible Creatures explained the inspiration: “Missions like Mars Pathfinder, Mars Exploration Rovers, Mars Science Laboratory and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, among many others, have provided important information in understanding of the habitability of Mars…  This poster imagines a future day when we have achieved our vision of human exploration of Mars and takes a nostalgic look back at the great imagined milestones of Mars exploration.”

Enceladus for Nasa Image by Invisible Creatures

The final poster looks at Enceladus, the tiny moon that orbits Saturn, and that has been one of the leading locations for life beyond Earth. NASA’s Cassini mission showed evidence of an ocean and of hydrothermal activity on Enceladus.