Orbit: The International Space Race

If the box art is a little underwhelming, there's a beautiful-looking board and components inside. The game is clever, too; condensing the High Frontier/Leaving Earth-type undertaking down into a shorter but still mostly-logical (outside of retrieving rockets from space!) set of mechanics, with asymmetrically-powered space agencies undertaking a multi-directional race to the planets, along with an element of luck-pushing by picking up Missions (like extra routes in TtR, but harder to achieve!) that could cost you if you don't complete them by the time the game is over.

What makes it really appealing, however, is at the end of every round the planets move along their orbital paths at varying speeds. Rockets landed or in orbit travel with them; but any others obviously don't, which means having to plan your missions into the cosmos incorporating the constantly shifting state of the board/planets.

If you like the theme of galactic exploration but don't want the rules overhead of High Frontier or mathsiness of Leaving Earth (not to mention the playtime) then Orbit does a cracking job of giving that space-race flavour with a relatively simple set of rules.