Why in the News?

The Lunar Codex program has the potential to bestow immortality upon an assorted collection of human-created art.

About Lunar Codex:

• The Lunar Codex is a remarkable collection of art curated by artists worldwide, intended to endure on the lunar surface as a timeless testament to human creativity, even amid tumultuous times like wars, pandemics, and economic crises.
• At the helm of this endeavor is Samuel Peralta, a semi-retired physicist and art enthusiast from Canada.
• Comprising diverse forms of digitized art, the Lunar Codex will be dispatched to the moon to serve as a permanent record of human ingenuity. Memory cards and NanoFiche, an updated 21st-century version of film-based microfiche, guarantee the safe arrival of these artistic expressions to the lunar surface.
• Carefully assembled from contributions by 30,000 artists, writers, filmmakers, and musicians representing 157 countries, the collection spans an array of art forms, including images, magazines, books, podcasts, movies, and music.
• The art is divided into four capsules:
• The first capsule, the Orion collection, has already encircled the moon after being launched aboard NASA's Artemis 1 mission via the Orion spacecraft last year.
• In the months ahead, multiple lunar landers will transport the Lunar Codex capsules to distinct locations, including craters at the moon's South Pole and the lunar plain known as Sinus Viscositatis, ensuring the enduring legacy of human creativity on Earth's celestial neighbor.