George Mason scientist Anamaria Berea leads team to design lunar cultural archive for the ‘Pioneers of Tomorrow’

Body

The ASPIRE ONE Lunar Record blasted into orbit early on Jan. 15 as part of the Ghost Riders in the Sky Lunar mission from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with a goal of establishing a new theoretical framework for planetary-scale archival communication.

Note from team on ASPIRE ONE. Photo provided

Anamaria Berea, George Mason University associate professor of computational sciences, led an interdisciplinary team that designed a part of the LifeShip payload to preserve our Earth's cultural and scientific heritage. It will be placed on the Moon with the Blue Ghost Lander.

Firefly missions are part of the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Servicesinitiative in the Artemis program that allows NASA to send science investigations and technology demonstrations to the lunar surface.

The digital portion of the LifeShip payload, similar to the Voyager Golden Records, is intended for future humans and contains diverse content including videos, global aspirations, scientific materials, historical records and cultural artifacts.

Firefly Blue Ghost will deliver the lunar record to the Moon's surface. Photo courtesy of NASA

"If launched successfully, and landed successfully, it is supposed to be set on the Moon after 45 days [early March] and live there for posterity/eternity," said Berea, who also holds a PhD in computational social sciences from George Mason. The first phase, launch, occurred successfully on Wednesday.

What will those accessing this interstellar archive encounter?

"We basically created a 1GB microchip on which we encoded various videos, images, and texts related to the cultural and scientific heritage about the Moon and Apollo 11 missions," Berea said. It is also engraved with nano-fiche with selected images from the payload, including Berea's name and affiliation with George Mason University.

The lunar record also contains a selection of scientific, historical and cultural content along with Moon-related materials.

The included Daily Life video depicts global snapshots of contemporary life, while the Aspirations video features individuals sharing hopes for the future in their native languages. A collection of images from the UNESCO and World Heritage archives accompany a Getty images documentation of the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

"This portion of the payload included the Apollo 11 launch code, various works of art and music, information about the Moon, and all Earth Constitutions, and more," Berea shared. "Not only my face, voice, name, and work will be on the Moon for future generations, but George Mason University too."