British artist Sacha Jafri has prepared the first ever painting to be placed on the Lunar service when it blasts off with NASA later this year.
The painting, called We Rise Together With the Light of the Moon, is engraved into a specially-designed aluminum-gold plate to survive the massive temperature swings on the Moon.
The small work depicts stick figures inside a heart, surrounded by other hearts and sweet messages. A second, fully-colored work will be sold at a charity auction around the same time, and 5 NFTs (non-fungible tokens) will go up for auction online at each critical moment in the mission, from liftoff to separation to landing.
Jafri’s work will arrive aboard NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which contracts private companies to operate freight lines to and from the Moon so that private and non-profit entities can conduct research there.
The aerospace firms Spacebit and Astrobotic will be running the mission. Astrobotic has pioneered a line of express delivery services to the Moon that will begin its virgin delivery route with Peregrine-1, a landing mission that will be carrying science instruments including rovers and spectrometers from multiple firms and governments.
It will also be carrying the ashes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s wife, Majel Barret Roddenberry.
We Rise Together is not actually the first piece of art on the Moon, but rather it’s the first painting, since NASA astronauts already placed an aluminum sculpture up there commemorating all those—both American and Soviet—lost in the course of manned-space exploration.
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