The Arch Mission Foundation is partnering with Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic to have a miniaturized library sent to the moon’s surface aboard a lunar lander in 2020.
The Lunar Library will include a wide range of works — including the contents of Wikipedia and the Long Now Foundation’s Rosetta Project, a library of the world’s languages. The text will be printed on 20-micron-thick, stamp-sized sheets of nickel, using a laser etching technique that can produce letters as small as bacteria. (You’d need a 1000x optical microscope to read the pages, but you wouldn’t need a computer.)
“We’re thrilled the Arch Mission Foundation has selected Astrobotic. It’s humbling to think our mission to the moon will deliver something that could be read millions of years from now,” Astrobotic CEO John Thornton said today in a news release. “Arch’s Lunar Library will be a monument not only to human knowledge and culture, but also the first commercial mission to the moon.”
