Between Science and Fiction: NASA's Voyager Missions and the Visualization of the Space Environment

The look of outer space in the public imagination is an image that changes alongside history, but certain moments have shaped the appearance of this remote landscape more than others. While Project Apollo transmitted the lunar surface in human terms via astronaut intermediaries, NASA’s push into the outer solar system in the 1970s was characterized by the robotic exploration of alien environments. Voyagers 1 and 2 drove the pictorialization of these places, a process greatly influenced by the geographic proximity of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, to the Hollywood film industry. The first film in the Star Wars franchise was released in May of 1977; Star Trek: The Motion Picture entered production shortly thereafter; and by September of the same year, engineers at JPL watched both Voyagers launch from Cape Canaveral. In 1979, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage introduced television audiences to the Voyager encounters via the Public Broadcasting System. Rather than characterizing this moment as one where new science informed the look of a given subject in popular media, JPL’s exchanges with the entertainment industry highlight the professional agency of trained artists in the production of scientifically accurate images.