NASA Pays Homage to 'Star Wars: A New Hope' With Satellite Images of Filming Locations - Inside the Magic

Star Wars: A New Hope, the film that launched the intergalactic film franchise that has amassed billions of dollars at the box-office and spanned over 40-years of new films and trilogies, has recently been celebrated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as the independent agency shared a satellite image of some of the original filming locations for the movie in Tunisia and they’re out of this world.

The satellite image can be seen below and identifies locations from the film with little white lines. These locations, featured in the movie, that can be seen on the map include Obi-Wan Kenobi’s House, Djerba Ajim, and Mos Eisley Cantina.

According to the Facebook post, NASA shares that “some of the most iconic scenes of the first Star Wars movie were set in the Mos Eisley Cantina, a dimly lit tavern on the desert planet of Tatooine. It was there that Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi first met Han Solo and Chewbacca, confronted the gangster Greedo, and made a dramatic escape after a firefight with Stormtroopers.”

NASA’s post also reveals their escape vehicle, the Millennium Falcon, inspired the name of a series of real-world rockets, including the SpaceX rocket named Falcon. 

“In the movie, Mos Eisley was a dusty, bustling port city set on a desert plain. In the real world, parts of several key scenes from the spaceport were filmed in Ajim, a fishing town on the Tunisian island of Djerba. The island (also called Jerba) is situated in the Gulf of Gabes on the Mediterranean Sea.”

NASA added, “A domed building that was once a Berber bakery provided the exterior of the cantina. Though now crumbling, the building still stands in the southern part of the city near a ferry terminal.”

NASA says apartments have now sprung up around it but tourists still come to see its exterior and find the skyline and cityscape that the Millennium Falcon rocketed through.

The post also points to the northern outskirts of Ajim, which NASA says holds another set from Star Wars — the desert abode of Obi-Wan. NASA says that the scenes were actually filmed in an old mosque along the Mediterranean Sea, which still stands but has become a storage space for fishing equipment. If you look carefully at the large image above, the structure is said to be just barely visible.

What are your thoughts on these aerial images showing these film locations from the original Star Wars: A New Hope? Let us know in the comments!