“If there’s anything the world needs right now, it’s a house on the moon.” If you guessed that Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos said that, you’re forgiven. But he was actually a Swedish artist, and he wasn’t talking about the kind of house you imagine.
On January 15, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, propelling Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander and ispace’s Resilience lander to the Moon. However, aboard the Resilience lander is a very unusual object: a toy-sized, white-trimmed red Swedish cottage called Moonhouse, also destined, as its name suggests, for the Moon. As detailed on Mikael Genberg websitethe artist has dreamed of landing his Moonhouse on the lunar surface for a quarter of a century, and now that dream is closer than ever to becoming a reality.
“So what does that mean?” What is the meaning? What is the goal? Genberg asked in a video statement. He had a very simple answer: “It’s art.” » And even if he says that art has no meaning or purpose, it raises questions.
“By placing something as simple and down-to-earth as a red house in a place as isolated, inhospitable and colorless as the moon, Mikael Genberg challenges our perception of what is possible and meaningful in the cosmos ” reads the project description on Moonhouse’s website. “In addition, The Moonhouse has a poetic connotation. It reminds us of our roots and our home on Earth while symbolizing our dreams and ambitions to explore and expand beyond our known boundaries.
Genberg’s little red houses have already appeared all over the world in trees, underwater, on the Great Wall of China and even on the International Space Station. In a few months, the Japanese-made Resilience lander should land at northern regions of the visible side of the Moon. The Moonhouse is already secured on the Tenacious micro rover, which will deploy from the lander to explore the lunar surface, according to a company. statement.
Then, “he would have to free the house, take some pictures and leave it alone there for thousands and thousands, maybe millions of years,” Genberg explained in the video. If all goes according to plan, Moonhouse will not only become the first artistic project on the Moon, but also technically the first. building on the moon (to our knowledge). Since its inception, Genberg has raised between $620,000 and $888,000 to fund the project, including theft, as the newspaper reports. Associated Press.
For now, the Moonhouse shares the ride with other goods, including a food production experiment, a deep space radiation probe, water electrolyzer equipment, an alloy commemorative plaque from a Japanese entertainment and engineering group and, of course, Tenacious the rover.
Ultimately, the Moon’s first building isn’t the kind of structure we all imagined, but can we really rule out the possibility that it’s the perfect size for extra-terrestrial life? I don’t think so.