The Exploration IssueNo. 04, Autumn 202641.39° N 2.17° E, Barcelona · Mission control

SpaceExploration

View from above the ecliptic · distances logarithmic · sizes not to scale

Simulation clocktoday

— UTC

01 / 09 · Terrestrial planet0.387 AU

Mercury

From the Sun: 57.9 million km3.2 light-minutes
From Earth now: —
Year: 88.0 days
Day: 58.6 d (sunrise to sunrise: 176 d)
Diameter: 4,879 km
Moons: 0
Orbital speed: 47.4 km/s

Its year is shorter than its day: 88 Earth days to go round the Sun, 176 from one sunrise to the next.

How far light travels · logarithmic

1 s1 min1 h1 day1 year1 000 y1 MyMoon1.3 light-secondsSun8.3 light-minutesJupiter43 light-minutesNeptune4.2 light-hoursVoyager 11 light-day, 18 Nov 2026Proxima Centauri4.24 light-yearsGalactic centre≈ 26 000 light-yearsAndromeda2.5 million light-years

Sixty-nine years ago a metal ball the size of a beach ball beeped its way around the Earth. Since then twelve people have walked on the Moon, two probes have left the Sun’s neighbourhood, and this spring four people flew further than anyone before them. The facts, the fictions, and the places in between.

01 / The record1957–2026

Sixty-nine years,
twelve dates.

19574 OctSputnik 1A polished sphere 58 cm across. It beeped for 21 days until its batteries ran out, and every radio on Earth could hear it.45.92° N 63.34° E, Baikonur
196112 AprYuri Gagarin, Vostok 1One orbit, 108 minutes, the first person to leave the planet. He landed by parachute in a field near Saratov.51.27° N 45.99° E, landing
196518 MarThe first spacewalkAlexei Leonov spent about twelve minutes outside. His suit ballooned in the vacuum, and he let air out of it to fit back through the hatch.Voskhod 2, Earth orbit
196920 JulApollo 11Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land in the Sea of Tranquility and bring back 21.5 kg of the Moon.0.674° N 23.473° E
197211 DecApollo 17Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, the last of the twelve to walk on the Moon. Nobody has been back to the surface since.20.191° N 30.772° E
197720 AugVoyager 2, then Voyager 1Two probes, each carrying a gold record of sounds and pictures from Earth. Both are still talking to us.28.53° N 80.57° W, Cape Canaveral
199024 AprHubbleLaunched with a mirror ground very slightly wrong. Astronauts fitted it with corrective optics in 1993, in orbit.Low Earth orbit, STS-31
199820 NovZarya, the first piece of the ISSSomeone has lived on board without a break since 2 November 2000.≈ 400 km, 51.6° inclination
201225 AugVoyager 1 leavesIt crosses the edge of the Sun's bubble of wind and becomes the first human-made object in interstellar space.≈ 121 AU from the Sun
20193 JanChang'e 4The first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, the side that never faces us.45.44° S 177.59° E
202125 DecJames Webb Space TelescopeFolded to fit the rocket, unfolded on the way out. It works from 1.5 million km away, at the second Lagrange point.Sun–Earth L2
20261–10 AprArtemis IIFour people fly around the Moon and reach 406 771 km from Earth, further than anyone has ever been.Splashdown off San Diego

Rows in orange went to the Moon.

02 / Fact or fictionEight things people believe

Fact
or fiction?

Pick one for each. The stamp tells you, and so does the reason.

0right, 0 of 8 answered

01
You can see the Great Wall of China from the Moon.
02
There is no gravity on the Space Station.
03
The footprints from the Apollo landings are probably still there.
04
The Moon has a dark side that never sees the Sun.
05
A day on Venus is longer than its year.
06
Without a suit in space, your body would explode.
07
The Moon is slowly moving away from us.
08
We have summer because the Earth is closer to the Sun.

03 / Where we landedEach plate is centred on its site

Where we
landed

Apollo 11 landing site as a screen print, centred on 0.674° N 23.473° E — Apollo 1120 July 1969, Armstrong, Aldrin0.674° N 23.473° EA flat sea of old lava, picked because it was smooth. The landing still came down four miles long, with fuel for less than a minute left.

Apollo 17 landing site as a screen print, centred on 20.191° N 30.772° E — Apollo 1711 December 1972, Cernan, Schmitt20.191° N 30.772° EA valley between mountains. Schmitt, a geologist, found orange soil here: tiny beads of volcanic glass.

Chang'e 4 landing site as a screen print, centred on 45.440° S 177.590° E — Chang'e 43 January 2019, Lander and the Yutu-2 rover45.440° S 177.590° EThe far side, inside one of the biggest impact craters in the solar system. A relay satellite carries every word back around the Moon.

Next landing site as a screen print, centred on 89.900° S 0.000° E — NextThe south pole, Where Artemis means to land89.900° S 0.000° EThe Sun only grazes the horizon here. Some crater floors haven't seen it in billions of years, and may hold ice.

The Earth, half lit, rising over the edge of the Moon, as an orange and paper screen print — EarthriseAfter the photograph by Bill Anders, Apollo 8, 24 December 1968. The first time anyone saw the Earth come up over another world. Redrawn for this issue.

04 / Before we wentFiction, then fact

We wrote it
before we went.

1657. Cyrano de Bergerac, The States and Empires of the Moon
The narrator reaches the Moon in a machine pushed by firecrackers, which makes it one of the first rockets ever written down.
Then Three centuries later, rockets are how everyone goes.
1865. Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon
Three men are fired at the Moon from a giant cannon in Florida. In the sequel they come home in the Pacific.
Then Apollo 8, 1968: three men, launched from Florida, back down in the Pacific.
1902. Georges Méliès, A Trip to the Moon
A capsule lands in the eye of the Man in the Moon. One of the most famous shots in early cinema.
Then Sixty-seven years later, the landing was broadcast live.
1938. Orson Welles, The War of the Worlds
A radio play about Martians landing in New Jersey. The nationwide panic it supposedly caused was mostly a story the newspapers told the next morning.
Then A fiction about a fiction.
1968. Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey
Released in April 1968, with a weightless toilet, a video call from orbit and a computer that talks back.
Then Fifteen months later, about 650 million people watched Apollo 11.

05 / Dressed for orbitShop the issue →

A Moontian in the Maison Lumière rhinestone T-shirt, wide black trousers and a dual moon buckle belt, in the studio — Maison Lumière, in the studio

Dressed
for orbit.

Nobody needs a pressure suit to look up. Pieces from the new collection, printed with the phases.

Look up.

The Moon is about 384 400 km away tonight, give or take 21 000. It is the only other world anyone has stood on.

Loading…

SpaceExploration

View from above the ecliptic · distances logarithmic · sizes not to scale

Simulation clocktoday

— UTC

01 / 09 · Terrestrial planet0.387 AU

Mercury

From the Sun: 57.9 million km3.2 light-minutes
From Earth now: —
Year: 88.0 days
Day: 58.6 d (sunrise to sunrise: 176 d)
Diameter: 4,879 km
Moons: 0
Orbital speed: 47.4 km/s

Its year is shorter than its day: 88 Earth days to go round the Sun, 176 from one sunrise to the next.

How far light travels · logarithmic

Sixty-nine years,
twelve dates.

19574 OctSputnik 1A polished sphere 58 cm across. It beeped for 21 days until its batteries ran out, and every radio on Earth could hear it.45.92° N 63.34° E, Baikonur

196112 AprYuri Gagarin, Vostok 1One orbit, 108 minutes, the first person to leave the planet. He landed by parachute in a field near Saratov.51.27° N 45.99° E, landing

196518 MarThe first spacewalkAlexei Leonov spent about twelve minutes outside. His suit ballooned in the vacuum, and he let air out of it to fit back through the hatch.Voskhod 2, Earth orbit

196920 JulApollo 11Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land in the Sea of Tranquility and bring back 21.5 kg of the Moon.0.674° N 23.473° E

197211 DecApollo 17Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, the last of the twelve to walk on the Moon. Nobody has been back to the surface since.20.191° N 30.772° E

197720 AugVoyager 2, then Voyager 1Two probes, each carrying a gold record of sounds and pictures from Earth. Both are still talking to us.28.53° N 80.57° W, Cape Canaveral

199024 AprHubbleLaunched with a mirror ground very slightly wrong. Astronauts fitted it with corrective optics in 1993, in orbit.Low Earth orbit, STS-31

199820 NovZarya, the first piece of the ISSSomeone has lived on board without a break since 2 November 2000.≈ 400 km, 51.6° inclination

201225 AugVoyager 1 leavesIt crosses the edge of the Sun's bubble of wind and becomes the first human-made object in interstellar space.≈ 121 AU from the Sun

20193 JanChang'e 4The first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, the side that never faces us.45.44° S 177.59° E

202125 DecJames Webb Space TelescopeFolded to fit the rocket, unfolded on the way out. It works from 1.5 million km away, at the second Lagrange point.Sun–Earth L2

20261–10 AprArtemis IIFour people fly around the Moon and reach 406 771 km from Earth, further than anyone has ever been.Splashdown off San Diego

Rows in orange went to the Moon.

Where we
landed

EarthriseAfter the photograph by Bill Anders, Apollo 8, 24 December 1968. The first time anyone saw the Earth come up over another world. Redrawn for this issue.

We wrote it
before we went.

1657. Cyrano de Bergerac, The States and Empires of the Moon

The narrator reaches the Moon in a machine pushed by firecrackers, which makes it one of the first rockets ever written down.

Then Three centuries later, rockets are how everyone goes.

1865. Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon

Three men are fired at the Moon from a giant cannon in Florida. In the sequel they come home in the Pacific.

Then Apollo 8, 1968: three men, launched from Florida, back down in the Pacific.

1902. Georges Méliès, A Trip to the Moon

A capsule lands in the eye of the Man in the Moon. One of the most famous shots in early cinema.

Then Sixty-seven years later, the landing was broadcast live.

1938. Orson Welles, The War of the Worlds

A radio play about Martians landing in New Jersey. The nationwide panic it supposedly caused was mostly a story the newspapers told the next morning.

Then A fiction about a fiction.

1968. Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey

Released in April 1968, with a weightless toilet, a video call from orbit and a computer that talks back.

Then Fifteen months later, about 650 million people watched Apollo 11.

SpaceExploration

Sixty-nine years,twelve dates.

Factor fiction?

Where welanded

We wrote itbefore we went.

Dressedfor orbit.

Look up.

SpaceExploration

Sixty-nine years,twelve dates.

Factor fiction?

Where welanded

We wrote itbefore we went.

Dressedfor orbit.

Look up.

Sixty-nine years,
twelve dates.

Fact
or fiction?

Where we
landed

We wrote it
before we went.

Dressed
for orbit.

Sixty-nine years,
twelve dates.

Fact
or fiction?

Where we
landed

We wrote it
before we went.

Dressed
for orbit.