In the 1990s, photographer Joan Fontcuberta decided to delve into Soviet space history with Sputnik: The Odyssey of Soyuz 2, a project that would take him seven years and was first exhibited to the public in Madrid in 1997. It recounts a tragic episode in the fascinating history of space exploration: the disappearance of cosmonaut Ivan Istochnikov in 1968 mid-flight, the victim of a failed operation. A tragic episode... fictionalized by Fontcuberta. Two simple exercises suffice to reveal the strategies Fontcuberta employed in this work: comparing his face with that of Ivan Istochnikov and translating his name into Russian.