Celebrate the 50th anniversary of NASA's groundbreaking Apollo program — and the 20th anniversary of Space.com — with a set of three free posters!
All three posters are illustrated by artist Melanie Lambrick and have been released as downloadable 11 x 14-inch (23 x 36 centimeters) prints.
Space.com debuted the first of the posters in the tryptic last October to mark the 60th anniversary of NASA becoming operational. That poster depicts five U.S.-developed rockets on their path to space: the Mercury-Redstone, Gemini-Titan, Saturn V, Mercury-Atlas and Saturn IB. (Hear from Lambrick about the poster's design process here.)
The second poster celebrates the moon landing; Apollo 11's 50th anniversary is this July. And the third panel looks into the future.
Download the posters online here: Poster 1, Poster 2 and Poster 3.
"We wanted the three posters to represent a tryptic to celebrate how we got to space, where we went to and where we will go — launch, landing and the future of space travel," said Jef Castro, Space.com's deputy photo director.
While the second image represents a specific historic moment — the first human landing on the moon — its design is stylized. Castro noted that the composition and some details differ from reality, as the image adds a mission patch to the astronauts shoulder and shows Earth reflecting in the helmet, though it doesn't show the image of the planet reversed.
The third image, depicting the future of space travel, shows Mars looming behind three shuttles. "The shuttles were deliberately nonrepresentational to any of the current proposed ships, [so as] to not choose any 'favorites' and to keep it generalized," Castro said.
While each poster can stand alone, the composition, shapes and colors on each are made to complement the others. We at Space.com hope you enjoy the posters — and check back here for much more coverage of the Apollo 11 anniversary (and, yes, our anniversary, too) as we approach July.
- Apollo 11's Scariest Moments: Perils of the 1st Manned Moon Landing
- 50 Years Ago Today, Humanity's Vision of Earth Changed Forever
- What the Next 50 Years Hold for Human Spaceflight
Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
