Last night I heard Jaron Larnier speculate that had Star Trek been on the air for ten more years, we'd be living in a different world much less akin to the inside of William Gibson's brain. Alas, the campaign below is reminiscent of, actually modeled after, attempts by a much younger America to not only communicate to its people about the possibilities of the new nation, but to support worthwhile enterprise and exploration.
Image credit: Kepler 16b - NASA Exoplanet Travel Bureau - 2015
"Like Luke Skywalker's planet "Tatooine" in Star Wars, Kepler-16b orbits a pair of stars. Kepler-16b is a gas giant, like Saturn, so it would have no solid surface to stand on. The view here is of and from an imagined nearby moon. Prospects for life on this unusual world aren't good, as it has a temperature similar to that of dry ice. But the discovery indicates that the movie's iconic double-sunset is anything but science fiction." Credit: Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech science.nasa.gov/resource/where-your-shadow-always-has-company/
'Greetings from 51 Pegasi b': How NASA made exoplanets into tourist destinations
Aug 2025, phys.org
In 2015, NASA launched an unusual and brilliant exoplanet outreach campaign, offering retro-style posters, virtual guided tours, and even coloring books. The project quickly went viral worldwide. What explains the success of a campaign about a relatively young field of science that — unlike other areas of space research — lacks spectacular imagery?
Ceridwen Dovey, science communicator, writer, filmmaker, and researcher, has just published in the Journal of Science Communication a Practice Insight paper that presents a case study focusing on the Exoplanet Travel Bureau's poster campaign. Dovey describes the productive working relationships between scientists and artists that produced this standout work and shows how, in contexts like this, artists are not merely in service to science but can also inspire research itself and help scientists clarify their own thinking.
First, the available visuals: "We live in an age of extraordinary astronomical imagery — the Hubble telescope's stunning images, for instance — that everybody knows well for their beauty, color and precision," explains Dovey. "But with exoplanet science imagery, at the moment there's really not very much to see — and this is a known challenge for the communication of exoplanetary science to the general public."
"The team at the Exoplanet Travel Bureau chose to use 1930s retro-nostalgic image styles inspired by the lovely posters of National Parks like Yosemite created by the Works Progress Administration. Those campaigns sought in part to provide work after the Depression and to attract tourists to iconic national parks like Yellowstone. These posters aimed to evoke the romance of visiting these places and the kinds of nature encounters that would be possible there," explains Dovey.
Joby Harris and his team decided to create a series of posters imagining exoplanets as if they were just around the corner—your next vacation destination. A playful way to encourage the public to imagine them as real places, drawing on the aesthetics and imagery of the historic series of U.S. national park posters. However, an important issue immediately arose during the discussions between artists and scientists.
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