You won’t believe NASA designed this new poster in 2022

The astronauts who will fly on the next mission to the International Space Station must love vintage nostalgia. 

NASA recently released a new poster to celebrate the upcoming SpaceX Crew-4 launch to the orbiting laboratory, and it’s got a distinct retro flavor. Astronaut Bob Hines, who will pilot the flight, said in a tweet on Wednesday that national parks posters from the 1930s and 1940s inspired the look. The old park promotionals were made by the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project.

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Astronaut Kjell Lindgren thanked Johnson Space Center graphic artist Cindy Bush for bringing the concept to life. 

If you find it hard to believe a serious federal agency would make an official marketing material like this, perhaps you haven’t been paying attention. Previous NASA posters have spoofed Star Wars, with all of the crew dressed as Jedi knights, The Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Harry Potter, and The Matrix, just to name a few. 

Expedition 45 poster
Credit: NASA

Expedition 42
Credit: NASA

Expedition 26
Credit: NASA

For the Crew-4 mission, NASA astronauts Lindgren, Hines, Jessica Watkins, and ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, started their official quarantine on Thursday. The flight will lift off no earlier than April 21. 

This crop of spacefarers is the fourth crew rotation for the space station as part of NASA’s commercial crew program. To get there, the crew will embark on a new SpaceX Crew Dragon named Freedom, atop the company’s Falcon 9 rocket. The spacecraft will launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. 

NASA delayed Crew-4 to spread out missions at the space station. The Axiom mission, the first all-private expedition to the space station, arrived Saturday, a little later than initially planned, to give teams time to “complete final spacecraft processing” ahead of the flight, according to NASA.