Malaysian Artist Choen Lee Sends Art up to the Moon With Lunar Lander
It’s not very often that non-scientific cargo gets sent up to outer space, and to the Moon of all places.
But Malaysian artist Choen Lee has managed to secure a spot on Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander, which just left planet Earth yesterday (at the time of writing) and is scheduled for a landing on the Moon on 2 March 2025.
To the moon we go
Choen Lee’s artwork, titled Who Wants to Live Forever?, is contained within the LifeShip Pyramid—a small pyramid-shaped monument designed to celebrate Earth’s life and preserve its story. Said artwork is joined by the works of other artists, including Amy Karle, Richelle Ellis, Ed Kac, and gallery collections by MoonMars, LunARC, and Lunar Codex.
Aside from being a physical monument, the LifeShip Pyramid also acts as a vessel containing:
- Plant seeds from 100 species
- The complete human genome digitised into Cerabyte ceramic storage (designed to last a billion years)
- The code for an AI Large Language Model (LLM) trained as humanity’s messenger probe
- Sacred waters and crystals from 33 sites worldwide
- The stories, wishes, and prayers from 25,000 people
- ALL of Wikipedia encoded in DNA
- A message to future civilisations by the Interstellar Foundation
- Blockchain wallets stored in molecular DNA with Iridia and Ocean Protocol
That basically sums up life on Earth for aliens and other advanced civilisations, doesn’t it?
But what will the LifeShip Pyramid be traveling to the Moon with?
The Blue Ghost Mission 1 lunar lander—a joint venture between Firefly Aerospace and NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which aims to deliver said payloads to the lunar surface.
Watch the lunar landing in March
The aircraft will spend 25 days orbiting around Earth before beginning a four-day transit to the Moon’s orbit. It’ll then orbit around the Moon for 16 days before landing on the lunar surface (2 March 2025), where it will spend 14 days conducting surface operations.
Click here to learn more.
For more art, head to JUICE Malaysia.