Photo Gallery
Across the Universe: 15 Space Exploration Movies

A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902)
Written and directed by French film pioneer George Méliès, Le voyage dans de lune is a fanciful tale of a lunar jaunt undertaken by a group of intrepid astronomers (outfitted as if going on a weekend trip to the beach). Never mind the innocent turn-of-the-century depictions of space travel (the spacecraft is launched from a giant cannon, the plucky adventurers sleep on blankets under a lunar sky filled with all sorts of celestial visitors), the world's first sci-fi movie was an epic undertaking using a slew of then-state-of-the-art visual effects.