NASA 'Star Wars' Expedition 45 Poster
NASA's Expedition 45 poster is inspired by "Star Wars." NASA

While NASA may be busy launching new solar wind satellites or monitoring the progress of New Horizons and Dawn spacecraft as they reach Pluto and Ceres, respectively, the space agency likes to have some fun, too. In the latest example of why NASA is out of this world, the space agency released a new "Star Wars"-themed International Space Station poster honoring Expedition 45 and one-year astronauts Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko. Even better, that's not the only science-fiction tribute poster, as NASA has been inspired by "Firefly," "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," "Metropolis," "Transformers" and, of course, "Star Trek."

The new poster dresses up Expedition 45 NASA crew members Kelly and Kjell Lindgren from NASA, Russian cosmonauts Kornienko, Oleg Kononenko and Sergey Volkov, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Kimiya Yui as Jedis from "Star Wars." The poster's tag reads, "International Space Station Expedition XLV: The Science Continues."

Expedition 45 begins in September with the arrival of Volkov completing the crew. Lindgren, Yui and Kononenko will launch to the space station on May 26 aboard the Soyuz 43. Kelly and Kornienko will launch to the space station in March and will spend a year in space, returning to Earth in March 2016. Kelly will be the first NASA astronaut to spend a year in space while Kornienko will be the fifth cosmonaut to accomplish such a feat. Cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov holds the record for longest duration mission and spent 438 days aboard the Mir space station.

NASA Expedition 42 Poster
NASA's International Space Station Expedition 42 crew poster is inspired by "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy." NASA

Expedition 42 is the current crew aboard the space station and they were honored with a "Hichhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" poster. NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Terry Virts, cosmonauts Elena Serova, Alexander Samokutyaev and Anton Shkaplerov and European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti are featured in the poster as is the space station's robotic astronaut, Robonaut 2.

You can see all of the ISS Expedition posters here. For more fun, check out these exoplanet travel bureau posters from NASA.