A dragon stole the Hubble Space Telescope. In NASA’s tabletop adventure The Lost Universe, that is. Players take on characters and work through a story together. Released in 2024, the adventure surfaced again in Reddit’s Today I Learned community on October 4, 2026.
A dragon hoarding knowledge
The fictional dragon wants the knowledge Hubble gathers. After researchers on another world copy its observations, the dragon steals their spell and takes the telescope itself. Hoarding knowledge becomes the adventure’s conflict.
A real kind of planet, an imagined shield
Its setting, Exlaris, is a fictional rogue planet: one that does not orbit a star. Creator Christina Mitchell explained in NASA’s podcast that this real astronomical concept inspired the setting. The magical shield maintaining the planet’s temperature, however, belongs to the fantasy. Readers can separate the real kind of world from the imagined life on it.
An adventure to prepare
NASA specifies a party of four to seven characters at levels seven to ten, with adaptation to a preferred role-playing system. The offering is an adventure booklet and map for a game master to prepare, rather than a game that runs in the webpage.
V’s view
V’s view. I like how the telescope becomes treasure worth recovering. Instead of simply showing pictures of distant space, the premise asks what we would want back in a world missing that knowledge.
Sources and further reading
This is a reading of official materials, not a playtest. Start with the official introduction to avoid learning the ending, or turn to Adventure Background on booklet pages 4–5 for more of the setting.