Forty years ago, space was little more than one big exciting question mark. It was a time when humans were first landing on the moon, the first satellite was being launched and one comic series, Frontiers of Science, was continuously making the front page of major newspapers across Australia.

A stunning collection of black and white images from the Frontiers of Science comic strip series will be on display at the ABC as part of the Ultimo Science Festival.

For those too young to remember, the facts-based series ran from 1961 to the 1980s in the Sydney Morning Herald and other major newspapers. It explored a different topic each week such as space travel, climate change or world population problems.

The comic strip was the result of an unlikely alliance between two men from utterly different worlds. Professor Stuart Butler was a theoretical physicist at the University of Sydney and Bob Raymond was a journalist, writer, filmmaker and executive producer of ABC TV's Four Corners program.