In an ambitious leap for humanity’s legacy, NASA’s Artemis program is preparing to send a modern-day time capsule to the moon.
The capsule isn’t just any container—it will hold sapphire discs meticulously etched with what could be described as the essence of human civilization.
Dubbed “Sanctuary On The Moon,” the initiative seeks to provide a repository of human knowledge, chronicling key information from diverse fields such as mathematics, culture, paleontology, art and science. Notably, it will preserve the human genomes of both a male and a female.
“We are delighted to take Sanctuary to the Moon,” said Joel Kearns, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration in the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. “We believe that this internationally curated repository of knowledge on the Moon will serve as an inspiration today and for many generations to come.”
The celestial archive draws inspiration from the pioneering golden phonographs aboard the Voyager spacecrafts — the first man-made objects to break the bounds of our Solar System. These iconic records carried greetings in 55 languages, messages from Earth’s leaders, and even the sound of a human heartbeat — a timeless message to the cosmos.
The new discs will go even further. Among their treasures, they will feature schematics for NASA’s historic Saturn V rocket and lunar modules, the very vehicles that propelled astronauts of the Apollo missions to the lunar surface. These discs serve as a multifaceted canvas, showcasing masterpieces by cultural titans like Leonardo da Vinci and Vincent van Gogh, and engraving fundamental human documents including The Declaration of Human Rights.
The scope of knowledge they encase is vast, with celestial and terrestrial maps, comprehensive data on human anatomy, details of astrophysical phenomena, and particle physics. Echoes of human ingenuity are also included, from the mechanisms of the combustion engine to the designs of pioneering aircraft.
The discs are the brainchild of French engineer Benoit Faiveley, who collaborated with a global coalition of scientists, researchers, designers, and artists to curate the contents of each disc. Mr. Faiveley himself features on one of them, donning an astronaut suit — a personal touch in this collaborative venture.
“The only thing left over from ancient cultures are tangible objects, hieroglyphs, stones, scripts, paintings that lasted over centuries and millenniums. So we took a similar path,” he said.
Protected within a sturdy aluminum capsule, the beacons of terrestrial life are scheduled for delivery to the lunar terrain aboard an automated space probe. This mission falls under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services contract and marks a new page in the chronicle of human achievement.
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