The Most Vertical Person on Earth

A long-form infographic, exploring the inspiring career of astronaut and deep sea explorer Kathryn Sullivan.

Created in collaboration with Resources for the Future, Esri’s StoryMaps team and Kathy Sullivan herself, this strikingly visual but narratively complex infographic navigates Kathy’s unique career, taking the reader from the Hubble Space Telescope, down to the deepest parts of Earth’s oceans.

This summer, Kathy Sullivan became the first person in the world to reach the lowest point on Earth—Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench. She’s now the first person to experience both the bottom of the ocean and outer space; in the 1970s, Sullivan joined the first cohort of women who became NASA astronauts, and 35 years ago, she became the first American woman to take a space walk. 

I wanted the infographic to visually convey the incredible distances that Kathy has travelled, and so made length a key feature of the layout. On the left are key moments and stats plotted on a scale, from the bottom of the ocean to the great heights of outer space. On the right is a more indepth look at Kathy’s career as an astronaut and as a deep sea explorer, including insights into her work and the technology behind two of her most famous missions.