Have trouble keeping track of the nearly 200 past and current missions to explore our solar system and beyond? National Geographic's elegant infographic displays 50 years of space exploration in a colorful map of our planetary neighbors.


The "Fifty Years of Exploration" map, created by Sean McNaughton and Samuel Velasco for National Geographic, outlines humanity's journeys into space, starting from the early failed mission to Mars and Venus to the current flight of New Horizons. A complete, but scaled-down version of the map is shown below, but you can see the giant, full-sized map here.

Fifty Years of Exploration [National Geographic via Stevey via Metafilter]