![With over 100 missions spanning seven decades, it’s tough to convey the full breadth of JPL’s activity in words. So the Lab developed this neat little visualization, which charts every mission chronologically, versus its distance away from the sun. We see most of the moon missions in the ’60s and ’70s, while missions to explore Earth (typically with satellites) are grouped towards the turn of the millennium, when the shuttle program was winding down. The dotted lines show us what the lab has planned for the future—more Mars missions, clearly, and intriguingly, more exploration of the universe at large.
[fastcodesign:JPL Mission History]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9jcunndyl1qzob3mo1_500.png)
With over 100 missions spanning seven decades, it’s tough to convey the full breadth of JPL’s activity in words. So the Lab developed this neat little visualization, which charts every mission chronologically, versus its distance away from the sun. We see most of the moon missions in the ’60s and ’70s, while missions to explore Earth (typically with satellites) are grouped towards the turn of the millennium, when the shuttle program was winding down. The dotted lines show us what the lab has planned for the future—more Mars missions, clearly, and intriguingly, more exploration of the universe at large.
