MoonMars Museum
Every mission that has carried art beyond Earth, to the Moon, to Mars, and onward to the stars. This is how we do it: not one artwork, but a museum built mission by mission.
Below: every mission, flown and flying soon, and the art each one carries. Start with Mission 0, where it all began.
Belgian artist Paul van Hoeydonck created the first artwork ever placed on the Moon, a small aluminium figure of an astronaut, carried there by the crew of Apollo 15 in 1971. It is often remembered as a memorial to fallen astronauts and cosmonauts, but that was never van Hoeydonck's intention. He meant the figure to stand upright on the lunar surface, a symbol of all humanity reaching for the stars; the 'Fallen Astronaut' name and the memorial framing came later, not from him.
Art going to the Moon must survive launch, vacuum and radiation, and last thousands of years. Three technologies make that possible.
Artworks etched onto a NanoFiche layer, a micro-film archival medium designed to endure on the lunar surface for thousands of years without degrading.
Nano-scale 3D printed objects, enabling physical art and artefacts to travel to the lunar surface in miniaturised, durable form.
Data encoded into fused silica glass using ultrafast lasers, stable for billions of years, built to carry artworks safely to the lunar surface.