Artworks to be launched to the Moon

History will be made later this year when artworks by a Charles Darwin University academic are launched to the Moon.

Images of two works by senior lecturer in visual arts Dr Ioannis Michaloudis were selected recently to feature in the first man-made sculpture to be permanently displayed on the Moon’s surface.

Dr Michaloudis said the sculpture would journey more than 383,000 km to the Moon from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, United States, aboard the Space X Falcon 9 rocket.

He said his works would feature on the sculpture with about 300 others worldwide as part of the Moon Arts Project led by academics and students at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

“When I first received the email confirming that my art would be sent to the Moon, I wasn’t sure whether to believe it,” he said.

“The pentagonal sculpture, known as ‘MoonArk’, will remain on the Moon forever and will be an archive for humankind.”

Dr Michaloudis said the aesthetic beauty and use of cutting-edge nanomaterials in his selected works, “Bottled Nymph” and “Noli Me Tangere”, had helped to secure their inclusion on the sculpture.

He said the images would travel to the Moon in the form of engravings on sapphire disks, stored within one of the sculpture’s four chambers.

“This is a great recognition of my work and also of my efforts to combine art with scientific practices,” he said.