Code name ? Lunar Codex. American physicist Samuel Peralta has recently fulfilled a childhood dream thanks to NASA: to send a little of himself, and a little of the artistic wealth of the Earth, in a kind of time capsule sent… to the Moon. An incredible project that this great art lover shares not only with NASA, but also with 30,000 artists from 157 different countries, relays The Guardian. Their works – songs, films, books or other art objects – were digitized, stored on memory cards and NanoFiche, then placed in the four time capsules that make up the Lunar Codex project.
The first time capsule, dubbed Orion, was already sent to the Moon thanks to NASA’s Artemis 1 mission in November 2022. Nova, the second capsule of the Lunar Codex project, is expected to fly into space in the fall 2023. Then will come Peregrine and then Polaris, later, in November 2024.
On the official Lunar Codex website, Samuel Peralta also publishes a message of hope, futuristic, and already imagines future “moonwalkers” discovering art, in its most global dimension, as it was appreciated by previous generations: “We hope that future travelers who find these time capsules will discover some of the richness of our current world… They bear witness to the idea that, despite wars, pandemics and climatic upheavals, humanity has found the time to dream, time to create art. »
Note that if terrestrial art has already traveled to space in the past (a drawing by Andy Warhol was on board the Apollo 12 mission in 1969), the collections have never been so varied. Lunar Codex honors many female artists, such as Ayana Ross and her painting New American Gothic, the engravings of Oleysa Dzhurayeva, a Ukrainian who fled her country after the Russian invasion, or the paintings of Connie Karleta Sales .
