Global media cultures among the stars: Formations of celebrity in outer space

The space age launched its own breed of celebrity onto the world stage. From Sputnik onwards, exploration of outer space has endowed media cultures with many spectacular events and prominent heroes, extending the currencies of fame beyond the planet. Under the rubric of ‘space celebrity’, this article gathers those famous people, animals and technologies that have been sent as our envoys into the unknowns of space, framing their exploits as a distinctive register of our mediated public culture and its global provisions. It traces the historical emergence and unfolding of space celebrity and explores the ways in which its human and non-human protagonists shape the extra-planetary horizon of our common world.