Extra-planetary mobilities and the media prospects of virtual space tourism

This paper responds to the emergence, proliferation and increasing relevance of various forms of virtual tourism set in outer space. It approaches virtual space tours as a distinct register of the changing nature of travel within global media cultures in their space age, framing them as a part of the ongoing socio-technical momentum of our emerging ‘extra-planetary mobilities’. We consider the extraterrestrial provisions of virtual tourism, including a host of space apps offering Martian tours and explore the ways in which the domestications of outer space through quotidian media practices affect our tourist disposition, altering collective ways of traveling and seeing, performing and consuming and configuring our mediated and embodied senses of place. We suggest that the prospects of mediated space travel are progressively shaping the relationship between human societies and our planetary exterior, sculpting the ambits of a ‘global abode’ beyond the globe.