Travelling to Outer Space

TidyTuesday Visualisation by Cedric Scherer

NoteAbout this showcase

This is an adaptation of Cedric Scherer’s stunning #30DayChartChallenge visualisation of astronaut mission data. It demonstrates what R and ggplot2 can produce — publication-quality data art from a single script. This page requires R with several packages to render, so it is pre-rendered locally.

The data

The dataset comes from TidyTuesday 2020, Week 29 — a comprehensive record of every human who has travelled to outer space, from Yuri Gagarin in 1961 to the present day.

library(tidyverse)

df_astro <- readr::read_csv(
  'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rfordatascience/tidytuesday/master/data/2020/2020-07-14/astronauts.csv',
  show_col_types = FALSE
)

cat("Astronauts:", n_distinct(df_astro$name), "\n")

Astronauts: 564 

cat("Missions:", nrow(df_astro), "\n")

Missions: 1277 

cat("Years:", min(df_astro$year_of_mission), "to", max(df_astro$year_of_mission), "\n")

Years: 1961 to 2019 

Cumulative hours in space by astronaut

Each vertical line represents one astronaut, sorted by the year of their first mission. The height shows their cumulative hours in space.

df_missions <- df_astro %>%
  group_by(name) %>%
  summarize(
    hours = sum(hours_mission),
    year = min(year_of_mission),
    .groups = "drop"
  ) %>%
  arrange(year) %>%
  mutate(id = row_number())

ggplot(df_missions, aes(x = id, y = hours, colour = year)) +
  geom_segment(aes(xend = id, yend = 0), linewidth = 0.3, alpha = 0.6) +
  geom_point(aes(size = hours), alpha = 0.8) +
  scale_colour_viridis_c(option = "turbo", end = 0.9, guide = "none") +
  scale_size_continuous(range = c(0.2, 3), guide = "none") +
  labs(
    x = "Astronaut (sorted by year of first mission)",
    y = "Cumulative hours in space"
  ) +
  theme_minimal(base_size = 14, base_family = "Source Sans 3") +
  theme(
    plot.background = element_rect(fill = "#0a0a0a", colour = NA),
    panel.background = element_rect(fill = "#0a0a0a", colour = NA),
    panel.grid = element_line(colour = "grey20", linewidth = 0.2),
    axis.text = element_text(colour = "grey60"),
    axis.title = element_text(colour = "grey70"),
    plot.margin = margin(20, 20, 20, 20)
  )

Figure 1: Cumulative time in outer space for all astronauts, 1961-2020

Top 10 astronauts by hours in space

top10 <- df_missions %>%
  slice_max(hours, n = 10) %>%
  mutate(
    name_clean = str_replace(name, "(.*), (.*)", "\\2 \\1"),
    years = round(hours / 8760, 1)
  )

ggplot(top10, aes(x = reorder(name_clean, hours), y = hours, fill = year)) +
  geom_col(width = 0.7) +
  geom_text(aes(label = paste0(round(hours), "h (~", years, " years)")),
            hjust = -0.05, colour = "grey70", size = 3.5,
            family = "Source Sans 3") +
  coord_flip(clip = "off") +
  scale_fill_viridis_c(option = "turbo", end = 0.9, guide = "none") +
  scale_y_continuous(expand = expansion(mult = c(0, 0.3))) +
  labs(x = NULL, y = "Cumulative hours in space") +
  theme_minimal(base_size = 14, base_family = "Source Sans 3") +
  theme(
    plot.background = element_rect(fill = "#0a0a0a", colour = NA),
    panel.background = element_rect(fill = "#0a0a0a", colour = NA),
    panel.grid.major.y = element_blank(),
    panel.grid.minor = element_blank(),
    panel.grid.major.x = element_line(colour = "grey20", linewidth = 0.2),
    axis.text = element_text(colour = "grey70"),
    axis.title = element_text(colour = "grey70"),
    plot.margin = margin(20, 40, 20, 20)
  )

Figure 2: The 10 astronauts with the most cumulative hours in outer space

TipOriginal visualisation

Cedric Scherer’s original version uses ggblur for glowing star effects and custom fonts. This adaptation simplifies for portability while preserving the core data story. See the original code for the full treatment.