Michael Standing, then Head of the BBC Variety Department, asked Chilton if he could write a sci-fi programme, and Journey to the Moon (later known as Operation Luna) was the result.

Fans of Journey Into Space included Colin Pillinger,[4] Kenny Everett,[5] John Major,[5] Stephen Hawking,[5] Miriam Margolyes[5] and former Doctor Who producer Philip Hinchcliffe.

Chilton wrote episode 8 of Journey to the Moon in response to a challenge from a TV producer, who considered the success of the series to be "a fluke".

[7] During the episode, Jet reads to the rest of the crew by torchlight from The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells, the only work of fiction carried on board the ship.

[3] During the first broadcast of this series, the Radio Times featured Journey Into Space on its cover, showing Andrew Faulds as Captain "Jet" Morgan.

The third series was a direct continuation of the story begun in The Red Planet, and followed Jet Morgan and his crew's return to Mars in an attempt to avert the impending Martian invasion.

Midway through the original broadcast of The Red Planet, a BBC Audience Research Report indicated that the series was described as "thrilling", "fascinating" and "most entertaining"...

However, others commented that the plot often featured scientific inaccuracies,[1] even though Chilton had received technical advice from Flight Lieutenant Roger Burton[1] and Kenneth Gatland of the British Interplanetary Society.

[9] One correspondent to the Radio Times commented that: Journey into Space was a glorified interstellar 'horse-opera' with no coherent plot, which relied on odd musical arrangements to bolster up the stilted conversations of characters with no substance.

There were no convincing word pictures of the new world: 'Jet' lacked tact and leader qualities and 'Lemmy' was an improbable space traveller, not to mention electronic engineer!

Philip Hinchcliffe has acknowledged growing up listening to Journey Into Space, citing in particular its cliffhangers, as an influence on his period as producer of the science-fiction television series Doctor Who between 1974 and 1977.

[13] Titles of his compositions include "A Picture of the Universe", "Rocket Away", "Music for Outer Space",[1] "The Red Planet", "Crossing the Plains",[3] and "Sunrise".

In Journey to the Moon, Lemmy occasionally provided musical entertainment for the crew on his mouth organ, playing songs such as "Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road" and "My Old Dutch".

[3] Other popular music used in The Red Planet included:[3] The World in Peril featured a 'rebel song', sung by the 'conditioned' men aboard the Martian asteroids.

This song was actually a musical arrangement of The Green Hills of Earth (a poem taken from Robert Heinlein's short story of the same name), performed by the George Mitchell Choir.

In addition to basic sounds, such as feet walking along a corridor or tunnel, more advanced effects were created, such as the mysterious haunting 'music' which is heard over the rocket's radio in many episodes of Operation Luna.

[13][full citation needed] Often, this would be followed by a slowly ascending tone (representing the rocket accelerating), which "was actually a recording of a thermionic valve played through an echo chamber down at the Physical Research Laboratory at Kingston".

Whenever the crew were in contact by radio with Earth control, or another distant location, the echo chamber would be applied to the voice of the remote character.

Tacconi spent some time with Chilton absorbing the atmosphere of the saga, and portrayed (in full colour) the radio actors' likenesses to match the clever dialogue.

In March 1957, Arthur Bruce Cornwell took over from Tacconi as artist, and Chilton lost his enthusiasm for the cartoon strip; thereafter it became a contractual chore for him.

Terence Patrick took over from Cornwell in April 1957, and by the time the third adventure began (The World Next Door), Chilton was no longer writing the scripts.

The 1956 Express Weekly annual contained a short black & white comic strip called Jet Morgan and the Space Pirates, illustrated by Tacconi.

The 1957 annual included a short story called Jet Morgan and the Space Castaway, written by Chilton and illustrated by Cornwell.

The Transcription discs were sold overseas, and their fate was unknown, so for many years it was believed that all the episodes had been lost forever, although a number were broadcast by the American Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS, formerly AFN) in Europe during the late 1970s.

[15] However, in 1986, a set of misfiled Transcription discs were found by Ted Kendall, a BBC recording engineer, which turned out to be copies of Operation Luna, The Red Planet and The World in Peril.

[15] Kendall then transferred the recordings to magnetic tape, removing "clicks" from the sound using a device which he designed and built, called the Mousetrap (or Front End).

In 1981, Radio 4's Saturday Night Theatre slot ran a special science fiction series, featuring stories such as The First Men in the Moon, The Chrysalids, A Fall of Moondust and The Technicolor Time Machine.

A further new episode based on the original series by Chilton, written by Julian Simpson starred Toby Stephens as Jet Morgan.

[14] A Dutch-language version of the first three series of Journey into Space was broadcast in the Netherlands by the Katholieke Radio Omroep (KRO) in 1955–1958 under the title Sprong in het heelal (Dutch for 'Leap Into the Universe'), directed by Léon Povel.