Space historiography can safeguard human civilization within an ever more expansive cosmic spatiotemporal horizon. Photo: TUCHONG

Humanity is extending its activities into low Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, and even deeper reaches of space at an unprecedented speed and scale. Viewed across a long spatiotemporal horizon, human civilization is gradually moving from a “terrestrial civilization” toward a spacefaring, interplanetary civilization. As the discipline devoted to recording and interpreting human activity, historiography must inevitably expand its field of inquiry beyond the boundaries of Earth as human activity reaches into outer space.

Connotation

What is space historiography? In broad terms, it is a new field of historical study that records and interprets all human space-related activities—including space exploration, resource development, and interplanetary migration—as well as human conceptions of space and the interactions and mutual influences between space activities and terrestrial civilization. Its object of study is not isolated “space events,” but humanity’s activities, explorations, ideas, and civilizational effects on a cosmic scale. Space historiography is not a retrospective endeavor reserved for a “completed” space age; instead, it unfolds concurrently with humanity’s advance toward a spacefaring civilization. It can be divided into three main areas: the early history of space exploration, the history of human space practice and activity, and the impact of space practice on terrestrial civilization.

The early history of space exploration encompasses the full trajectory from ancient astronomical observation to modern space science. This includes ancient records of the Sun, Moon, stars, and planets; the instrumental innovations of medieval Islamic astronomers; the Copernican Revolution’s overturning of earlier cosmological worldviews; and the history of space technological exploration since the early 20th century. Taken together, these strands cover humanity’s long history of imagining and scientifically investigating the cosmos. This dimension emphasizes the history of “looking up at space from Earth,” with core sources including ground-based observatories, government archives, and records from scientific research institutions.

The history of human activity in space shifts the perspective from Earth to low Earth orbit and extraterrestrial bodies, bringing a wide range of new subjects into view. Contemporary human activity in near space is its primary concern, including the everyday lives of astronauts aboard space stations, as well as scientific experiments and research missions conducted in orbit. Lunar exploration and resource development will form another major component. Mars exploration and colonization are likewise unfolding in real time. A lineage of missions—including the United States’ Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance rovers, as well as China’s Tianwen-1—reflects an evolving set of objectives, from searching for water and analyzing minerals to collecting samples and testing oxygen production. Behind this technological progression lies a step-by-step deepening of humanity’s understanding of Mars.

The history of space resource development remains in its infancy, yet related domains have already become core areas of inquiry. These include planetary resource prospecting and mining, space elevator transport systems, orbital energy supply, infrastructure for extraterrestrial habitation, and the technological history of lunar, Martian, and asteroid exploration. At the same time, the ecological consequences of celestial energy extraction and the ethical implications of planetary protection policies further expand the traditional “human–nature” framework of planetary and environmental history to an extraterrestrial, even cosmic, scale.

Legal disputes and geopolitical competition in space, along with future legislation on space resource extraction, space colonization, and diplomatic frameworks governing relations between terrestrial civilization and potential extraterrestrial civilizations, are also beginning to shape new historical narratives.

Outer space has never been truly “demilitarized,” and space history must therefore also examine the intersections among military activity, politics, and diplomacy.

The history of space life, emotion, and travel offers another important dimension. This field focuses on astronauts’ everyday lived experiences, the experiences of commercial space passengers, and psychological adaptation in long-term confined environments. The “overview effect” reported by many astronauts during space missions produces a distinctive emotional experience that transcends Earth-bound existence, becoming an important chapter in the history of human emotions. In the future, as “space travel” becomes increasingly common, humanity’s extraterrestrial practices and emotional horizons will continue to expand.

The impact of space activities on human civilization constitutes the most intellectually expansive dimension of space historiography. Its implications can be understood along at least three interconnected fronts.

First, the extraction of extraterrestrial resources and their eventual inflow to Earth will profoundly reshape global resource distribution, international politics, and everyday social life.

Second, once interplanetary migration becomes a reality—for example, if humans establish settlements on Mars—new questions will arise about how human social structures will be reorganized on other planets. Will relations between Earth and extraterrestrial settlements take the form of an equal alliance, or will they reproduce a center–periphery structure? Will interplanetary generational transmission give rise to new forms of identity? Such questions have already entered the research agendas of sociology and anthropology.

Finally, the reconstruction of temporal consciousness presents an even deeper challenge. Although the time dilation effects of special relativity are negligible in current crewed spaceflight, they will become significant once spacecraft approach sublight speeds: After several years of travel, decades may have passed on Earth. A Martian sol (24h 39m 35.244s) is about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day, meaning that long-term residents will gradually develop biological rhythms misaligned with terrestrial society. At near-light speeds, relativistic time dilation would cause astronauts’ personal timelines to diverge from the historical progression of Earth itself. The temporal order and causal chains of historical events would become misaligned across multiple frames of reference, requiring historiography to develop conceptual tools for “relativistic chronology.” Space historiography must therefore devise historical narrative models compatible with multi-planetary temporal frameworks, such as parallel chronologies based on Earth time and planet-specific time systems.

Methodologies

How should space historical research be conducted? This is fundamentally a methodological question that requires the integration of multiple disciplinary approaches.

First, space historiography depends heavily on interdisciplinary methods. Approaches from the history of science and technology provide foundational tools for understanding the developmental logic of space exploration. By tracing breakthroughs and transfers along key technological chains—such as rocket propulsion, guidance and control systems, and extraterrestrial life-support technologies—researchers can reveal how technological change has driven humanity’s space exploration and related activities.

Second, planetary history provides a methodological basis for analyzing interactions within extraterrestrial ecological systems. Existing work in planetary history, environmental history, and ecological history focuses on how human activity transforms Earth’s ecosystems. Space historiography extends this analytical framework to outer-space environments such as the Moon, Mars, and asteroids, as well as to artificially constructed closed ecological systems such as space stations and future colonies. Researchers must examine how non-terrestrial conditions—including cosmic radiation, microgravity, and low atmospheric pressure—shape human behavior and technological design, and conversely, how human activity reshapes extraterrestrial landscapes through dust disturbance, resource extraction, and atmospheric modification.

Third, digital and intelligent technologies equip space historiography to process massive and heterogeneous datasets. A single Mars mission can generate terabytes of scientific data; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) engineering reports run to tens of thousands of pages; and astronaut oral history transcripts continue to accumulate year by year, making traditional reading methods increasingly inadequate. Text mining can support topic modeling and discourse network analysis of space policy documents; visualization tools can present half a century of launch activity in spatiotemporal form; and geographic information systems can overlay exploration routes and sampling sites onto digital elevation models of Mars. In the age of artificial intelligence, digital-intelligent methods are reshaping historical narrative, as digital humanities move from a supporting tool to a core methodological framework.

Finally, oral history and anthropological methods are essential for capturing the micro-level and subjective dimensions of space experience. Astronauts are unique witnesses to the space age. Their training processes, flight experiences, psychological adaptation during long-term missions, and emotional responses to the “overview effect” constitute forms of perceptual knowledge that official archives cannot fully capture. In-depth interviews with aerospace engineers, mission controllers, and policymakers can further reveal the informal knowledge, organizational culture, and individual agency embedded in decision-making processes.

Significance

Why propose space historiography at all? Its construction carries a fundamental epistemic mission: At the historical juncture when humanity is becoming an interplanetary species, it asks anew what history itself is for. History once recorded the rise and fall of dynasties through chronological annals; it once constructed collective identity within the framework of the nation-state; it once transcended Eurocentrism through global perspectives; and it later adopted Earth as its unit of analysis, exploring the co-evolution of humanity and the planetary ecosystem. Each paradigm shift corresponded to a redefinition of human self-understanding.

Space historiography compels us to rethink human history from a cosmic scale and to ask again: What is humanity’s place in the universe? How should human civilization develop within a cosmic context? These questions once belonged primarily to theology and speculative philosophy, but they now enter the historian’s agenda with urgent practical significance. Space historiography is the echo of these questions within the discipline of history.

Its framework remains unsettled, its methods are still being refined, its sources are continuously emerging, and its questions keep proliferating. Yet this is precisely where its intellectual appeal lies: in recording, examining, and interpreting the new unfolding of human civilization on a cosmic scale, and in drawing its conceptual map. This is also where the humanistic concern of history resides—to safeguard human civilization within an ever more expansive cosmic spatiotemporal horizon.

Wu Chou is an associate professor from the School of History at Beijing Normal University.