Imagination is our window into the future. Nasa takes this a step further by releasing a series of posters of imaginative travel destinations to offer people visions of the future.

Maybe one day a package tour to Mars will be an entirely humdrum affair with travel agents offering one week holidays or even the possibility of total migration. Or how about experiencing the strangeness of a planet with a different gravitiational pull than ours?

These posters have all been developed by Nasa designers to help trigger the imagination into picturing travel beyond recognition. All posters are available for poster-sized download online.

www.jpl.nasa.gov

Gravity of a super Earth

Twice as big in volume as the Earth, HD 40307g straddles the line between being considered a kind of ‘super Earth’ and a mini-Neptune, and scientists aren’t sure if it has a rocky surface or one that’s buried beneath thick layers of gas and ice. One thing is certain though, its gravitational pull is much stronger than that of Earth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spectacular light show

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 traveller. Jupiter’s auroras are hundreds of times more powerful than Earth’s and they form a glowing ring around each pole that’s bigger than our home planet. Revolving outside this are the glowing, electric ‘footprints’ of Jupiter’s three largest moons. Nasa’s Juno mission observes Jupiter’s auroras from above the polar regions, studying them in a way never before possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where your shadow always has company

Like Luke Skywalker’s planet Tatooine in Star Wars, Kepler-16b orbits a pair of stars. Depicted here as a terrestrial planet, Kepler-16b might also be a gas giant like Saturn. 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Travelling the outer reaches

Nasa’s 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 – using each planet’s gravity to send them on to the next destination. Voyager set the stage for such ambitious orbiter missions as Galileo to Jupiter and Cassini to Saturn. Today, both Voyager spacecraft continue to return valuable science from the far reaches of our solar system.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where the grass is always redder

Kepler-186f is the first Earth-size planet discovered in the potentially habitable zone around another star, where liquid water could exist on the planet’s surface. Its star is much cooler and redder than our sun. If plant life does exist on a planet like Kepler-186f, its photo-synthesis could have been influenced by the star’s red wavelength photons, making for a colour palette that’s very different than the greens on Earth. This discovery was made by Kepler, Nasa’s planet hunting telescope.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A second home

Nasa’s Mars Exploration Programme seeks to understand whether Mars was, is, or can be a habitable world. Missions like the 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 that will someday be celebrated as ‘historic sites’.

 

 

 

 

 

Where the Nightlife Never Ends

Discovered in October 2013 using direct imaging, PSO J318.5-22 belongs to a special class of planets called rogue or free-floating planets. Wandering alone in the galaxy, they do not orbit a parent star. Not much is known about how these planets come to exist, but scientists theorise that they may be either failed stars or planets ejected from very young systems after an encounter with another planet. These rogue planets glow faintly from the heat of their formation. Once they cool down, they will be dancing in the dark.

 

 

 

 

 

The belvedere

The rare science opportunity of planetary transits has long inspired bold voyages to exotic vantage points – journeys such as James Cook’s 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 vantage points across our solar system.

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