Travel Posters of Fantastic Excursions
What would the future look like if people were regularly visiting to other planets and moons? These travel posters give a glimpse into that imaginative future. Take a look and choose your destination:
Our Voyager mission took advantage of a once-every-175-year alignment of the outer planets for a grand tour of the solar system. The twin spacecraft revealed details about Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune ā using each planetās gravity to send them on to the next destination.
Our Mars Exploration Program seeks to understand whether Mars was, is, or can be a habitable world. This poster imagines a future day when we have achieved our vision of human exploration of the Red Planet and takes a nostalgic look back at the great imagined milestones of Mars exploration that will someday be celebrated as āhistoric sites.ā
Thereās no place like home. Warm, wet and with an atmosphere thatās just right, Earth is the only place we know of with life ā and lots of it. Our Earth science missions monitor our home planet and how itās changing so it can continue to provide a safe haven as we reach deeper into the cosmos.
The rare science opportunity of planetary transits has long inspired bold voyages to exotic vantage points ā journeys such as James Cookās trek to the South Pacific to watch Venus and Mercury cross the face of the sun in 1769. Spacecraft now allow us the luxury to study these cosmic crossings at times of our choosing from unique locales across our solar system.
Ceres is the closest dwarf planet to the sun. It is the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, with an equatorial diameter of about 965 kilometers. After being studied with telescopes for more than two centuries, Ceres became the first dwarf planet to be explored by a spacecraft, when our Dawn probe arrived in orbit in March 2015. Dawnās ongoing detailed observations are revealing intriguing insights into the nature of this mysterious world of ice and rock.
The Jovian cloudscape boasts the most spectacular light show in the solar system, with northern and southern lights to dazzle even the most jaded space traveler. Jupiterās auroras are hundreds of times more powerful than Earthās, and they form a glowing ring around each pole thatās bigger than our home planet.Ā
The discovery of Enceladusā icy jets and their role in creating Saturnās E-ring is one of the top findings of the Cassini mission to Saturn. Further Cassini discoveries revealed strong evidence of a global ocean and the first signs of potential hydrothermal activity beyond Earth ā making this tiny Saturnian moon one of the leading locations in the search for possible life beyond Earth.
Frigid and alien, yet similar to our own planet billions of years ago, Saturnās largest moon, Titan has a thick atmosphere, organic-rich chemistry and surface shaped by rivers and lakes of liquid ethane and methane. Our Cassini orbiter was designed to peer through Titanās perpetual haze and unravel the mysteries of this planet-like moon.
Astonishing geology and the potential to host the conditions for simple life making Jupiterās moon Europa a fascinating destination for future exploration. Beneath its icy surface, Europa is believed to conceal a global ocean of salty liquid water twice the volume of Earthās oceans. Tugging and flexing from Jupiterās gravity generates enough heat to keep the ocean from freezing.
You can download free poster size images of these thumbnails here: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/
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