Writers on the Moon Project Launching a Time Capsule
The Writers on the Moon (WOTM) project will launch a time capsule to the lunar surface in July of this year. The capsule will include the works of multiple writers, musicians and artists from around the world.
"Our hope is that travelers finding this capsule will discover some of the richness of our world today,. It speaks to the idea that, despite wars and pandemics and climate upheaval, humankind found time to dream."
Dr. Samuel Peralta
The capsule is joining NASA payloads on Astrobotic's Peregrine Mission One, launching in July 2021 on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) rocket to the Moon.
Author Dr. Samuel Peralta, a physicist and entrepreneur, is also a writer whose fiction has hit the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller lists, and whose poetry has won awards worldwide, including from the the UK Poetry Society, and the League of Canadian Poets.
Dr. Peralta conceived of the Writers on the Moon project with with rocket scientist and author Dr. Susan Kaye Quin. "I was fourteen on my first launch, an Antares model kit by Estes with a thumb-sized engine," said Dr. Peralta. "Now I'm on a United Launch Alliance rocket powered by BE-4 engines made by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. Wow."
The centerpiece of Dr. Peralta's payload is Memory's Children, a collection of his short stories, essays, and poetry, as well as the 21 volumes of his Future Chronicles anthologies, all Amazon bestsellers.
Leveraging his space, he also included catalogs from curated art exhibits, musical compositions, works from his artistic family, and screenplays from independent films that he's helped produce, including for Real Artists, which won an Emmy Award in 2019.
"Our hope is that travelers finding this capsule will discover some of the richness of our world today," Dr. Peralta said. "It speaks to the idea that, despite wars and pandemics and climate upheaval, humankind found time to dream."
Including his collaborative writers and artists, Dr. Peralta's payload manifest represents a global reach, including from Canada, the US, Europe, and Asia—417 individuals in total, the largest manifest of the 125 primary payloads.
The database resides in a microSD card, encapsulated in a DHL MoonBox, delivered by Astrobotic's Peregrine Lander through NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, and launched via a ULA Vulcan Centaur rocket. The mission marks Earth's return, and the first mission carrying commercial payloads, to the lunar surface.
(Source: Dr. Samuel Peralta news release. Image from Astrobotic YouTube video)