Art and space: ‘A quest never to end’

CNN Film ‘Apollo 11’ explores the exhilaration of humanity’s first landing on the moon through newly-discovered and restored archival footage. Fellow astronaut John Glenn said, “he saw the same monochromatic world as the other astronauts, yet with an artist’s eye he also saw intrinsic beauty in the rocks and boulders and their textures and shapes.” He was the first artist to land on the moon, but he wasn’t the only astronaut with a passionate connection to art. Norman Rockwell Family Agency “Art is part of what makes us human,” said Bill Barry, NASA’s chief historian. NASA NASA's Exoplanet Travel Bureau Prev Next Joby Harris, a visual strategist and designer at The Studio, said they were motivated by the question “why would you want to go there?” He hoped that the exoplanet posters in particular might inspire the next generation to figure out how we might reach them, since current technology would require thousands of years. In 2018, they rented a spaceship set for a day and brought in two actors from the TV show “The Expanse” to film an episode of NASA’s “Universe of Learning.” In the five-minute video, the explorers visit a planetary system in hopes of finding a planet in the habitable zone, which may be just the right temperature to support liquid water on its surface and thus life.