50 Years, 200 Missions, One Enormous Map

Posted on October 13, 2009

National Geographic‘s elegant infographic displays 50 years of space exploration in a colorful map of our planetary neighbours.

The “Fifty Years of Exploration” map, created by Sean McNaughton and Samuel Velasco for National Geographic, outlines humanity’s journeys into space, starting from the early failed mission to Mars and Venus to the current flight of New Horizons. A complete, but scaled-down version of the map is shown below, but you can see the giant, full-sized map here.