An awesome infographic on 50 years of space exploration from National Geographic, although they’re using a kludgey flash viewport. Check out the full size version while it lasts.
Update: If you like that one, check out this visualization of the various mars missions.
The first television images of Mars were created using pastels. Project engineers were eager to know if their instrumentation was working properly, and didn’t want to wait for the imaging lab. They printed the data out on to small strips of paper and coloured with the appropriate pastel given a certain data range.