Updated: April 26, 2026

In 1997 US Space Control placed a family into suspended animation and sent them aboard the spacecraft Jupiter-2 to the Alpha Centauri system, in the hope of finding a new world for the people of an overcrowded Earth to colonize. Unfortunately, contact with the ship was lost, and the family is believed to have crashed.

Confused? Okay, so it didn’t happen in the 1997 we remember, but in the alternate future 1997 of the 1960s TV program Lost In Space.

Lost in Space was a space age version of the classic novel The Swiss Family Robinson, with the Robinson family marooned on a dangerous alien planet instead of a desert island. The family consisted of parents Professors John and Maureen Robinson ( Guy Williams and June Lockhart ) and their children; attractive teenager Judy ( Marta Kristen ), younger sister Penny ( Angela Cartwright ) and the real star of the show, young Will ( Bill Mumy ). Accompanying them on their five year suspended animation mission was dashing co-pilot Major Don West ( Mark Goddard ). Unfortunately, an agent of an undefined ‘foreign power’ had stowed away on the ship, in the form of saboteur Dr. Zachary Smith ( Jonathan Harris ). Smith re-programmed the ship’s robot to obey his voice only, and his meddling with the on board computers caused the craft to smash into an uncharted planet.