Even 50 years later, the sci-fi epic ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ is impacting the genre as we know it today. In 1968, Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick took audiences on a tour through space to find the origins of human life. The intergalactic fetus, known as Star Child, became a staple of the film, and though it has been decades since the prop's moment in the spotlight, it tours internationally to this day.

“The Star Child was built in autumn 1967 in the 2001 art department at the British MGM Studios,” The curator of the Stanley Kubrick Exhibition, Tim Heptner, told Atlas Obscura. “I started to look after the prop when it became part of the Stanley Kubrick exhibition in 2004 … so I have been traveling with this prop for quite a while.”

The Kubrick Exhibit is currently in Frankfurt, Germany, but has made its rounds in major US cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. Though the Star Child is celebrating its 50th birthday, it still doesn't even look a day old.

(Photo: Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 2.0)