A Journey to the Universe – a space photography exhibition

On the railing (grids) of the perimeter of the Jardin du Luxembourg—the Luxembourg Garden in Paris—a photographic exhibtion of space exploration will be on display from 21 September 2019 to 19 January 2020. The exhibition is called "Un voyage dans l’Universe"—"A Journey into the Universe."

The exhibition commemorates the 50th anniversary since man set foot on the moon for the first time - and for the last time in 1972.

On July 21, 1969 at 3:56 am, French time, American astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped out the space craft that landed in the Sea of Tranquility on the moon, and set foot on lunar ground, uttering, "It is a small step for a man, a giant leap for humanity." 

In 1969, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins made history during the Apollo 11 mission, fulfilling NASA’s goal, announced a few years earlier, to send a man to the moon and bring him back to Earth.

Gérard Larcher, President of the French Senate, said that the Senate wanted to remember this imprint on the lunar soil, and the scientific and technological feat accomplished, through the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES) public exhibition, "A Journey to the Universe." 

General de Gaulle brought France into the space competition in the early 1960s by announcing on 19 December 1961 the creation of an agency, he CNES, responsible for coordinating French space activities. 

In 1964 the Kourou site in French Guiana was selected to set up a space base. The exhibition on the Luxembourg Garden Grids devotes a large part to the projects carried out by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the success of the Ariane rocket.

"The exhibition also pays tribute to the ten French astronauts who have been in space, from Jean-Loup Chrétien in 1982 to the youngest of the European astronauts, Thomas Pesquet, who spent nearly 200 days on the International Space Station (ISS), and to Claudie Haigneré, the first and only French woman to have contemplated our blue planet from so far away," said Gérard Larcher.

Jean-Yves Le Gall, President of CNES, iterated the words of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2001 Space Odyssey, saying "Distance makes everything infinitely more valuable."

"As the Soviet satellite reached Earth’s orbit in 1957, it marked the beginning of the space wars between the Soviet Union and the United States, the latter putting an end to it just over 10 years later in 1969, sending the first men to the moon," Le Gall said. 

Since the Apollo missions, rovers now roam the surface of Mars in search of traces of life, and Saturn's rings have been extensively studied. Le Gall said that France and Europe hold their place in these extraordinary cosmic journeys. "CNES is thus one of the major players in space exploration and has contributed to the success of the major missions of recent years, all carried out in an international framework, whether it's Rosetta-Philae's encounter with the comet "Churi" or the mascot robot's contact with the asteroid Ryugu or the landing of the InSight-SEIS mission on Mars, which has just detected earthquakes for the first time in the red planet, these missions clearly contribute to forging the narrative of the space conquest."

"This exhibition attests to this mobilization of talents and energies, which, beyond exploration, also concerns the important themes of the fight against climate change and a large number of applications in the service of the citizen," said Le Gall.

"For let's not doubt, each of these space missions is a renewed feat. Paradoxically, it is also a form of frustration for man who, despite his fierce desire for discovery, remains the most fragile element of space exploration. Radiation, extreme temperatures, physiological changes, refuelling difficulties, psychological fragilities linked to isolation: space places constraints on humans such that robots now add to the progress of Earth's long-term relationship with space."

"No doubt that in the near future, our dreams of exploring deep space will come true, thanks to the pooling of each person's know-how and ambitions. In this respect, there is every reason to rejoice in the enthusiasm of the new generation for space," Le Gall concluded.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).