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Call your travel agent: these NASA travel posters will make you want to head to space

Priyata Brajabasi | Updated on: 14 February 2017, 5:39 IST

Now that we're booking tickets for travel to space, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to treat them like a tourist destination. In other words, ripe for a travel pitch.

That someone turned out to be NASA - and they've seriously upped their funk factor. The agency commissioned a series of 'space tourism' posters recently that have serious vintage style but even more important - posters that put space travel firmly in the imagination of the traveller.

Nasa Travel Poster_1

The Grand Tour will give the passengers a tour of 4 planets - Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. This tour takes place once ever 175 years. A once in a lifetime journey for sure.

Nasa Travel Poster_2

The tour of Mars will include visits to historic sites on the Red planet. It will cover the architecture and agriculture of the planet along with its arts and culture development. A not so distant future of the Red planet?

The posters were the brainchild of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for a 2016 calendar to be given to NASA staff, scientists, engineers, and government officials; they commissioned Seattle-based design firm Invisible Creature to do the job.

While the company has done projects for clients like Nike, Seattle Weekly, Target, and other global brands in the past, there's no question the space commission is something special. Which is why they've clearly given it all they've got.

Nasa Travel Poster_3

The tour of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons and one of the largest moon of the solar system is definitely worth a visit. The tour promises to discover life under the ice - Europa is mainly water ice crust. This will definitely be one of the coldest winters you will ever encounter!

Nasa Travel Poster_4

One of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, has one of the most geologically active surfaces in our solar system. With ocean-like water bodies and geyser-like jets of water vapor emitted, this might just be your new vacation destination.

Three posters were publicly released and the JPL will also release digital copies of each month's artwork for free. Physical prints of Invisible Creature's posters can be bought off the firm's website.

For Don Clark, who started Invisible Creature with brother Ryan in 2006, this was a dream project - and not just because space is the final frontier. "We, of course, were ecstatic, just because our grandfather was an illustrator at NASA for 30 years, and so this is kind of our first NASA project," he told The Verge.

Nasa Travel Poster_5

Twice as big in volume as the Earth, HD 40307g Straddles the line between "Super-Earth" and "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: at eight times the Earth's mass, Ir's gravitational pull is much, much stronger.

Nasa Travel Poster_6

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 planet life does exist on a planet like Kepler-186f, its photosynthesis could have been influenced by the star's red-wavelength photons, making for colour palette very different than the greens on Earth.

The poster series is an inarguably hit and the studio is now releasing a more extensive set called Visions of the Future (the first three of which were published yesterday). All 14 posters - including the Exoplanet series - are now available for download on the JPL website.

Among the more striking artworks is of the planet that seems to consume all our popular imagination for the moment: Mars. Perhaps symbolising our incessant curiosity with the red planet, the poster weaves in symbols of rockets, planes, agriculture, and the suggestion of a human presence. It's almost like you're just mere years away from NASA-trips to-and-from the red planet.

Well the real trip may be a while away. But in dreams - and dramatic artworks - that journey is yours to take anytime.

Nasa Travel Poster_7

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-sensed is anything but science fiction.

Nasa Travel Poster_8

The set of space tourism posters released by NASA.

All photos courtesy NASA.

First published: 12 February 2016, 4:48 IST
 
Priyata Brajabasi @PriyataB

Priyata thinks in words and delivers in pictures. The marriage of the two, she believes, is of utmost importance. Priyata joined the Catch team after working at Barcroft Media as a picture desk editor. Prior to that she was on the Output Desk of NDTV 24X7. At work Priyata is all about the news. Outside of it, she can't stay far enough. She immerses herself in stories through films, books and television shows. Oh, and she can eat. Like really.