FEATURE
‘We Have Liftoff!’
Finding Open Images on the Topic of Space Exploration
by David Haden
I was a child during the first Space Race, so I had the great luck to witness the initial exploration of our solar system and the first moon landing. Now my eyes are full of wonder as I witness an unexpected second Space Race. Even more tantalizing possibilities await humanity: Mars and far beyond. For example, NASA’s Europa Clipper is on a mission as I write this, speeding toward Jupiter with an arrival year of 2030. This spacecraft—the largest yet built—may discover traces of active alien life in the seas of the moon Europa. That would be a wonderful way to celebrate 70 years of space exploration.
Given this history of vigorous investigation into our solar system and the vast amounts of information it has generated, many laypeople have an interest in outer space. As such, I thought it would be useful to offer a basic launchpad to open online information sources on space travel and exploration. This article focuses on finding still images.
AGENCIES AROUND THE WORLD
Let me start the countdown by noting the key space agencies. Other than NASA in the U.S., major players offering large open repositories include the European Space Agency (ESA) and France’s ONERA. There are many others, and the United Nations (UN) usefully maintains a single-page linked directory of worldwide space agencies (excluding SpaceX). It should then be easy to make a simple custom search engine with these links via Google’s free Programmable Search Engine. You could add links to countries that dropped out of the first Space Race but still provided early expertise. For instance, there is AERADE, which is a repository of British space reports before 1980. The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum website also springs to mind as a rich historical resource. All of these could be searched via a Google custom search. I should also note the valuable private work of SpaceX, the SETI Institute, the Mars Society, and others. SpaceX releases a wealth of images and videos for free.
NASA’S ARCHIVES
Even skimming through NASA’s galaxy of websites would require many articles to list all of its resources. I’ll point to key starting points and will skip the obvious public-facing mission websites (for the Voyagers, space telescopes, Mars rovers, Space Station, etc.). The NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) forms the core resource, with some 650,000 documents. Its publications can give precise names and numbers of images, which might then be found in higher-resolution form in the online archives of the five key NASA centers. For instance, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s library has—despite the unpromising name—many of the NASA mission visualization paintings, diagrams, 3D renderings, and illustrations. For a more human angle, to complement such images, there are extensive NASA Oral Histories online.
SPECIAL PUBLICATIONS
Note that if NASA calls an item a Special Publication, then it will usually be “concerned with subjects having substantial public interest,” according to various NASA publication guides. For those interested in the first Space Race, there is a useful 1981 catalog of 1,200 such publications. Overlapping the 1981 catalog is the extensive ongoing series of free ebooks in the NASA History Series. Among these, note the introductory 50 Years of Solar System Exploration: Historical Perspectives (2021) and Beyond Earth: A Chronicle of Deep Space Exploration, 1958–2016 (2018). The long-running newsletter NASA History News & Notes may also interest historians and picture researchers, along with the peer-reviewed Communicating Astronomy With the Public journal published by the International Astronomical Union.
IMAGES AND COPYRIGHT
Many historic space exploration photos are on Flickr as collections, such as the 15,000-picture Project Apollo Archive for the Apollo mission. Picture researchers may prefer a deep dive into original archives, but for those with editorial use in mind and deadlines to meet, the NASA Image and Video Library has selected 100,000 of the very best high-res photos from more than 70 NASA imagery collections.
Note that some NASA images will be flagged for educational and personal use only, although almost all NASA imagery is in the public domain. ESA images usually require a license for commercial use, but there is an editorial use exemption. In 2015, Elon Musk announced that all official SpaceX images are in the public domain, but watch out for some the company flagged as Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic in 2019. Some of the SpaceX Mars base concept artwork seems especially restricted.
GOOGLE IN SPACE
As for the solar system’s planetary surface imagery, Google Sky Maps was a key gateway. But Sky died in August 2024, and it was replaced by the free Google Earth Pro desktop software or Google Maps in Space via a web browser. Users are offered a straightforward sidebar with planets and moons; when you click through, you see a seamless, zoom-able surface in a friendly, Google Maps-like interface. Yes, you can put boots on Mars, if only virtually for now!
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DAVID HADEN is the former editor of Digital Art Live magazine. He now works with a large, well-known British firm. Haden is the curator of the JURN search tool for open discovery of OA arts and humanities content (