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]

Comporellon
From: Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series
History: Comporellon, known first as Baleyworld and then as Benbally World, was one of the first planets settled by human Spacers.
Local Color: Comporellians operate under a strict social and religious ethic and are quite sexually repressed, although said repression can be countered through robotic mind control.
Key Attraction: Clues to the location of Earth.
Watch out for: Corrupt government officials who will try to swindle you out of your superior technology. Also, Comporellon is one of the colder planets in the Foundation Federation, so be sure to pack your thermal underwear.

Harmony and Association
From: Gordon Dickson’s Childe Cycle
History: Two of the 15 planets colonized by humans, Harmony and Association are a pair of impoverished planets inhabited by the Friendlies and ruled by the Council of Churches.
Local Color: The Friendlies are fierce adherents to their religion, able to endure any hardship in service to their faith. Some are quietly spiritual while others are full-blown fanatics.
Key Attraction: Farms. Both planets are largely agrarian, although they supplement their meager incomes by drafting their citizens to serve as mercenaries.
Watch out for: Sectarian violence between warring groups of Friendlies.

Kukulkan
From: L. Sprague de Camp’s Viagens Interplanetarias Series
History: As humans spread out into the stars, one of the planets they settle is Kulkulkan, a planet already inhabited by the reptilian “Kooks.”
Local Color: The Kooks are an intelligent, dispassionate, and honorable race who have managed to construct cities, forge edged weapons, and develop steam technology. They have a land treaty with the human Terrans, but still eye their new planetary roommates with cool suspicion, so be nice.
Key Attraction: Steampunk dinosaurs.
Watch out for: Evil land developers, evil loggers, and anyone else looking to repeat the cycle of American colonization.

Yellowstone
From: Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space Series
History: Humans colonized the planet Yellowstone and a series of surrounding orbital habitats known as the Glitter Band. At one point, it becomes the height of human civilization.
Local Color: Depending on which century you choose to visit, the upper crust of Yellowstone could be technologically sophisticate democratic anarchists leading a life of luxury, or deformed survivors clinging to the last vestiges of their culutre’s former glory.
Key Attraction: The sight of the greatest achievements in human history, or the ruins thereof.
Watch our for: The Melding Plague, which will attack any nanotech in your body and leave you dead or physically deformed.

Vulcan
From: Star Trek
History: Vulcan is the birthplace of both the Vulcan and Romulan peoples, the former going on to found the United Federation of Planets.
Local Color: The Vulcans are a coldly logical people with a coldly beautiful culture. They are restrained and polite, and if they seem condescending, don’t take it personally. They’re that way with everyone.
Key Attraction: The kal-if-fee, a rare but blood-pumping event where two fighters battle to the death over a woman's hand.
Watch out for: The lack of meat and booze. Vulcans stick to a mostly vegetarian diet and don’t derive much enjoyment from alcohol.

Babylon 5
From: Babylon 5
History: Following the Earth-Minbari War, the space station Babylon 5 was placed in orbit around the abandoned planet Epsilon III to serve as a political neutral venue of human-alien discourse.
Local Color: At Babylon 5, you’ll witness one of the most diverse groups of residents in the galaxy, from the imperialistic Centauri to the spiritual Minbari to the mysterious Vorlons.
Key Attraction: Red Sector, which houses the station’s gardens, swimming pool, casino, and sports bar.
Watch out for: Anything and everything. When the various governments aren’t threatening to go to war and a rogue alien or telepath isn’t about to rend the station apart, one of the thugs from Downbelow is bound to steal your traveler’s checks.

[Boston Globe via A Second Hand Conjecture]

Five papers published in a recent issue of Nature explain the crossing of the termination shock, the outer edge of the solar system where the solar wind (particles expelled by the sun) dies off. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 exited at opposite ends of the solar system (north and south, relative to the orientation of Earth), and found that the interstellar magnetic field alters the shape of the heliosheath. Voyager 2 discovered that the termination shock is much more dynamic than astronomers guessed, with the solar wind ebbing and surging like rippling waves at the beach. Voyager 1 found some mysterious cosmic rays that scientists haven't figured out yet, and researchers also learned that energized ions from interstellar space help push back against the solar wind.

It's incredible that the Voyagers are still working, considering that astronomers in the 70s weren't even sure if they would accomplish their primary mission to explore Saturn and Jupiter. The amount of data they have generated is immense - much of what we know about the outer planets, even today, is based on Voyagers' exploration. Their distance from Earth is difficult to comprehend - it takes more than 14 hours for radio signals from the probes to get back to us. Although their radioisotope generators will run out of power in the next few years, and their orientation thrusters will use up the last of their fuel, they will continue their steady flight into space at more than 30,000 mph. There's really nothing out there to damage them or slow them down, so they will be traveling for a long, long time. It will take tens of thousands of years before they're anywhere near another star, and it might be millions of years before their journey finally ends. They'll be carrying those weird golden records that Carl Sagan designed just in case, but if anyone ever finds them, they'll probably serve as an epitaph to a human race long since vanished.

You can check out a longer article I recently wrote about the Voyagers over at HowStuffWorks. Image by: NASA/JPL.

The laboratory at the end of the solar system. [Nobel Intent]

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• The first five missions to Mars were all Soviet flyby attempts, and all of them failed for reasons ranging from "radio failure" to "spacecraft broke apart." Still, it's impressive that they managed so many attempts within only two years in the early 60s.
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• The first US mission was also a failure when Mariner 3's shroud failed to jettison, leaving it without solar power. It remains to this day in a solar orbit. Mariner 4 ended up being the first successful mission to Mars in 1964 when it was able to return 21 images from a flyby. The ship continued operation until late 1967, when it ran into a micrometeoroid storm which caused severe alterations in trajectory and communications. It was lost forever in December of 1967.
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• We weren't able to orbit the planet for seven more years until Mariner 9 became the first satellite to successfully orbit the planet, barely beating the Soviets by a couple of months. The spacecraft used up its supply of fuel for adjusting trajectory, and was turned off a year later in 1972. Surprisingly, the satellite remains in a steady orbit around the planet, at least until 2022 when it should plunge into the atmosphere.
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• Numerous attempts at flybys and orbit resulted in both Soviet and US satellites exploding on launch, crashing back to Earth, or heading deep into the Atlantic Ocean. It would be a bit spooky encountering the remains of Mariner 8 in murky waters off the coast of Puerto Rico.
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• However, not being content to just fly past the planet or orbit it and send back images, plans were made to begin landing objects on Mars that could send data back to us. The Soviet Mars 2 achieved orbit back in 1971, but the Lander portion of the mission didn't go quite so well, and it crashed onto the surface of the planet. However, it has the dubious distinction of being the first manmade object to reach the surface of Mars.
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• The US Viking MIssions to Mars were some of the most successful Mars explorations ever launched. Viking I was launched in 1975, and after a 10 month journey to the red planet, it was successfully inserted into orbit. Then on July 20th 1976, the Viking Lander was launched from the ship, and landed on the planet and continued to operate for over six years. It was accidentally deactivated in 1982 when ground control sent a faulty command that caused the Lander to overwrite its own antenna pointing software, and all contact was lost. It still sits, alone and waiting, on the surface of the planet.
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• Viking 2 was launched a few months after Viking I, but its batteries failed early, and it was shut off in 1980. It's harder to think of a more lonely image than the two Viking Landers sitting abandoned on the face of Mars.
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• The Soviet Union tried again to launch Mars missions in the late 1980s, still stinging from the general failure of their Marsnik program from the 1960s, and the Mars program of the 1970s. However, both Phobos 1 and Phobos 2 suffered critical failures. Phobos 2 was lost when its transmitter failed to turn back on (it was shut off when the spacecraft was taking photos), and Phobos 1 was lost when a command sent from Earth left out a single character and caused the ship to go into a spin from which it never recovered.
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• The United States decided to return to Mars in 1992 with the Mars Observer. However, that ship was lost just three days before it was to be inserted into Mars orbit, and no one knows what happened to it. Theories state that there was an explosion in a propellant line, although we'll never know for sure.
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• The Russians tried again in 1996 with Mars 96, a ship based on the Phobos designs, but it failed to exit the Earth's atmosphere, and the ship crashed off the coast of Chile.
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• The US also decided to try again that same year with the Mars Global Surveyor which successfully orbited the planet and returned images for ten years. In 2006 it was determined that the vehicle had gone into "safe mode," and NASA officially ended the mission in January of last year.
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• NASA also had much success with the launch of the Mars Pathfinder, and its Sojourner Rover, which became the first Martian Rover. It was able to transmit 16,500 images in three months, although we lost contact with it in 1997, and NASA officially shut it down in 1998. Interesting fact: the landing zone for the Pathfinder was designated the Carl Sagan Memorial Station, in honor of the man who said beelyuns, a billion times.
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• Japan decided to get into the race for the red planet in 1998 with the launch of Nozomi (Japanese for "Hope"), although it failed to achieve the proper trajectory, used too much fuel, and was damaged by severe solar flares. Although the ship didn't achieve its mission, it remains operational in solar orbit.
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• One of NASA's most massive failures came in 1998 when it launched the Mars Climate Orbiter. This was the famous ship that burned up in the Martian atmosphere, due to the fact that a technician at Lockheed Martin had used Imperial measurements instead of the Metric system. Ouch.
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• NASA launched the Mars Polar Lander a year later, and it suffered a severe failure moments before landing on the planet. Although it supposedly crashed to the surface, attempts to locate wreckage have failed, and it remains lost. Spooky, eh?
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• NASA also tried to launch two probes in the Deep Space 2 mission in 1999 that would penetrate the surface of Mars, but they were never heard from once they slammed into the surface. Nothing like angering the red planet, is there?
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• In 2001 NASA launched the 2001 Mars Odyssey, named after 2001, A Space Odyssey, and it remains in action to this day, with its current mission extended to September of this year.
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• In 2003 NASA launched the Mars Exploration Rovers Opportunity and Spirit within a month of each other, and they both remain in operation to this day. In fact, Spirit was just narrowly saved from being shut off. Last summer, both rovers endured dust storms on the planet that blacked out the sky and nearly forced them to run out of power due to their separation from the sun, but they both lived through it.
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• The European Space Agency also launched the Mars Express in 2003, which was a mission in two parts: the Mars Express Orbiter, which is still in use today, and the Beagle 2. The Beagle 2 was an ambitious lander that failed to make contact after it was supposed to land on the planet, and was declared lost in 2004.
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• NASA launched the Phoenix last August, as part of the Mars Scout Program, and it is due to touch down on Mars in May of this year. It'll use a robotic arm to dig into the polar terrain, and try to find out the mystery of Martian water. Namely: where the hell did it all go?
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• There are many more Mars missions planned for the next two decades, including another NASA rover, this one three times bigger than Spirit or Opportunity, and another try by the Russian Phobos design team, the first since 1996. No one can resist the pull of Mars.
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What's more insulting is a glance at the list of other entrants on the list, which will soon be boiled down to the nominees:

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• Evan Almighty: seriously, a bunch of CGI animals? Giant waves? We're weeping, on the inside. Doctor Doolittle had some similar effects, from what we remember. We love Steve Carell, but not as Neo Noah.
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• The Bourne Ultimatum: sure Matt Damon kicked some butt, but other than that chase across the rooftops and a car chase or two, the vfx didn't blow our pants off.
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• The Golden Compass: this movie got lost in the wake from the Harry Potter yacht, and the effects looked impressive, and a bit too Narnia-esque.
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• I Am Legend: we'll tip our hat to this one, since those desolate shots of an empty Manhattan are simply gorgeous, and the hordes of infected were pretty scary as well. Especially that shot where they're all huddled together the in dark. Yikes.
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• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: This is what happens when you marry a really shoddy story that's full of holes with a ton of CGI. A mess that looks fake and is ultimate unsatisfying. Like a bowl of wax fruit.
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• Transformers: decent effects, like the drawn-out Optimus Prime transformation and some of the slow-motion fights, but in the heat of most of these robo-battles, it was hard to tell what was going on. Something we keep hearing about this flick.
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• 300: We wanted this to capture more of the spirit of the Frank Miller graphic novel, but simply copying scenes from it didn't work. Sure, Gerard Butler was great, but at times this felt a bit goofy. Still, we'll admit the effects were the film, and not badly done.
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Sunshine, while you might not be the Academy's darling, you're certainly ours.

More than a few people have been alarmed since the comet flared up and can now be seen by the naked eye in your own backyard. Plus scientists still have no idea why the eruption occurred, and they don't even know what's in the middle of the thing. So you can be sure there's someone out there telling everyone it's an alien spaceship, and who's to say it isn't? Hopefully this doesn't mean the earth will be surrendering to the Comet Empire any time soon.

As far as Holmes colliding with us, unless you were planning to hitch a ride on the back of this thing, you don't have anything to worry about. Holmes orbits the Sun at 200 million miles out, which is a shade past our own 93 million mile orbit. Besides, if this thing was going to come anywhere near us you know that NASA has Bruce Willis programmed into their speed dial.

Incredible Comet Bigger Than The Sun [SPACE.com]