Dubai-based artist Sacha Jafri is set to become the first artist in the world to place the first official work of art on the lunar surface of the moon.
The British artist officially launched his artwork ‘We Rise Together with the Light of the Moon’ aboard the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan Rocket from Cape Canaveral on Monday morning.
‘We Rise Together with the Light of the Moon’ by Sacha Jafri.
The piece of art will be placed on the Moon with the help of Selenian, a pioneering company that specialises in the curation of art in space, and Astrobotic, a commercial space company, in association with NASA under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative known as NASA CLPS.
The landing site will then become a world heritage landmark preserved forever. Jafri has used a moon-resilient aerospace-grade aluminium gold plate as his canvas for the artwork to be fully resilient to the lunar conditions. This process took just over two years of testing for Spacebit to be able to confirm that it would last eternally on the Moon
With the successful launch of the Peregrine Mission One, exciting times are ahead with Sacha Jafri’s painting becoming the first official artwork to be launched from Earth to the moon. This historic day marks NASA’s first moon mission in over 50 years with Astrobotic’s Peregrine Mission One, as part of the NASA Artemis programme. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson described it as “…a giant leap for humanity as we prepare to return to the lunar surface for the first time in over half a century.”
Jafri’s Artwork is due to land on the moon on Friday, the 23rd of February. Given the recent updates from Astrobotic, this is now likely to be a hard landing rather than a soft landing. However, the artwork will still land on the moon and will be able to withstand a hard landing due to the resilient material of the artwork plate.
The artist, Sacha Jafri, commented on the launch, saying: “The placement of my moon-landed artwork aims to be a symbol for a reconnected humanity. At night, as our Earth falls into darkness, our only natural light comes from the Moon, but now as it shines its light, it shines with the symbolic message of my moon-landed Artwork, and from the darkness comes the light. My hope is for humanity to reunite as we begin to vibrate at a higher frequency, embrace humility, understand the power of universal consciousness, and realise the fragility of our planet.”
