Formation | October 24, 2016 [1] Spring, Texas, U.S. |
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Founders | Nova Spivack Nick Slavin |
Type | Non-profit |
81-3446615 | |
Purpose | Cultural preservation |
Location |
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Key people | Nova Spivack, co-founder Nick Slavin, co-founder |
Website | ArchMission.org |
Arch Mission Foundation is a non-profit organization whose goal is to create multiple redundant repositories of human knowledge around the Solar System, including on Earth. [3] The organization was founded by Nova Spivack and Nick Slavin in 2015 and incorporated in 2016. [4]
The Arch Mission plans to deliver multiple backups of civilization to locations around the Solar System as part of a distributed backup strategy. [5]
The foundation plans "multiple...Arch libraries intended to preserve and disseminate humanity's knowledge across time and space for the benefit of future generations". [6] The foundation is technology agnostic and will use whichever storage technology is best for its purposes including multiple technologies. The first method used is "5D laser optical data storage in quartz", which will reportedly remain readable for up to 14 billion years, resist cosmic radiation, and can withstand temperatures up to 1,000°C. [7] [8] The foundation also plans on spinning off companies based on patents from research groups involved with the technologies it uses to fund itself in the future. [9]
As a proof of concept of the 5D optical data storage technology, Arch made 5 disks each containing Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy comprising about 3 megabytes each. [10] The disks were created by Peter Kazansky at the University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), the inventor of the 5D optical data storage technology and a member of Arch Mission Foundation's "Science and Technology Council". [11] The discs are considered the longest-lasting storage objects ever created by humans. [12]
In December 2017, when Arch co-founder Nova Spivack heard that SpaceX was launching a Tesla into space, Spivack tweeted to Musk who jumped at the opportunity to include an Arch disk on the mission. Musk was also given the 1.1 disk for his private library. [13] [14] The 1.2 disk, named the 'Solar Library' by the Arch Mission Foundation also represents the first permanent space library, [15] and is projected to orbit around the Sun for at least a few million years. [13] The Solar Library was launched on the SpaceX Falcon Heavy test flight on February 6, 2018, inside Musk's red Tesla Roadster. [16] The payload was placed in an elliptical orbit that extends nearly 243 million miles from the Sun at its farthest point. [17]
In 2019, the Arch Mission sent the Lunar Library, a 30 million page library of books, data, images and a copy of English Wikipedia to the Moon aboard the Israeli Beresheet Lander. [18] [19] The Lunar Library also contained an unannounced microscopic sample of tardigrades, a form of life that can go into suspended animation and survive in space. Nova Spivack called himself a "space pirate" who contaminated the Moon by doing so, while some scientists argued that tardigrades were already present there. The Lunar Library also contains several vaults of secret content, including David Copperfield's magic secrets, a cafe's unpublished recipe for queso , a microscopic shrine including relics and spiritual texts, and a sample of the Bodhi leaf from India. [20] [21] [22] On February 22, 2024, the Arch Mission successfully landed the Lunar Library on the Moon, on the Intuitive Machines IM-1 mission's Odysseus lander. [23]
The library was stored by etching high-resolution microscopic images into 25 thin layers of nickel. The first four layers include approximately 60,000 pages of textbooks, books on language, and information to be able to unravel the deeper layers. [24]
DNA digital data storage is also used to store 20,000 images and 20 notable books. [25] The analog layers of the Lunar Library have instructions to decode the DNA and be able to retrieve the digital information in it. [26]
Arch hopes to seed the Solar System with millions and possibly billions of archives into "all kinds of locations". [9] It wants to build a permanent library on the Moon and on Mars. [9] [8] Arch envisions its small light-weight disks might be an alternative means of moving large amounts of data between Earth and Mars as opposed to radio signals. [9] The organization envisions connecting the Arch Libraries through a decentralised read-write data sharing network that spans the Solar System. [12]
Data in the libraries will include Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, human genomes, and other large open-data sets. [9] They will also allow donations of money to instruct that certain data be included, and will do so without censorship of what can be included. [9] The foundation cites the likelihood that a being developed enough to find and read the information would already possess significant technology as the reason for not prioritizing scientific data sets. [9]
In February 2018, the Arch Mission successfully placed an archive called the Orbital Library, which contains a copy of Wikipedia, into low-Earth orbit. [27] The Arch Mission has also built a payload called the Lunar Library, which serves as a backup to planet Earth [28] and contains scientific, cultural and historical information in almost 30 languages and several encyclopedias including Wikipedia. The Lunar Library was set to arrive on the Moon on the Israeli spacecraft Beresheet , but it crashed landed on the Moon in May 2019. [29] [30] Despite this, the 30-million page Lunar Library possibly survived due to the strength of its construction. [31]
In 2021, Arch Mission announced partnerships with Astrobotic Technology and Galactic Legacy Labs for several return missions to the Moon such as a second attempt to deliver the Lunar Library and for consumers to land their personal memories and photos on the Moon. [32] [33]
Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an American spacecraft manufacturer, launch service provider and satellite communications company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. The company was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and ultimately developing a sustainable colony on Mars. The company currently produces and operates the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets along with the Dragon and Starship spacecraft.
Elon Reeve Musk is a businessman and investor. He is best known for his key roles in space company SpaceX and automotive company Tesla, Inc. Other notable involvements include ownership of X Corp., formerly Twitter, and his role in the founding of The Boring Company, xAI, Neuralink and OpenAI. He is one of the wealthiest people in the world; as of June 2024, Forbes estimates his net worth to be US$210 billion.
Dragon is a family of spacecraft developed and produced by American private space transportation company SpaceX. The first family member, later named Dragon 1, flew 23 cargo missions to the ISS between 2010 and 2020 before retiring. This version, not designed to carry astronauts, was funded by NASA with $396 million awarded through the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, with SpaceX announced as a winner of the first round of funding on August 18, 2006.
Vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) is a form of takeoff and landing for rockets. Multiple VTVL craft have flown. The most successful VTVL vehicle was the Apollo Lunar Module which delivered the first humans to the Moon. Building on the decades of development, SpaceX utilised the VTVL concept for its flagship Falcon 9 first stage, which has delivered over two hundred successful powered landings so far.
Nova Spivack is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and author. He is the founder and CEO of the early stage science and technology incubator Magical and co-founder of The Arch Mission Foundation.
Falcon Heavy is a partially reusable super heavy-lift launch vehicle that can carry cargo into Earth orbit, and beyond. It is designed, manufactured and launched by American aerospace company SpaceX.
SpaceIL is an Israeli organization, established in 2011, that competed in the Google Lunar X Prize (GLXP) contest to land a spacecraft on the Moon.
Tesla Energy Operations, Inc. is the clean energy division of Tesla, Inc. that develops, manufactures, sells and installs photovoltaic solar energy generation systems, battery energy storage products and other related products and services to residential, commercial and industrial customers.
Lunar tourism may be possible in the future if trips to the Moon are made available to a private audience. Some space tourism startup companies are planning to offer tourism on or around the Moon, and estimate this to be possible sometime between 2023 and 2043.
A super heavy-lift launch vehicle is a rocket that can lift to low Earth orbit a "super heavy payload", which is defined as more than 50 metric tons (110,000 lb) by the United States and as more than 100 metric tons (220,000 lb) by Russia. It is the most capable launch vehicle classification by mass to orbit, exceeding that of the heavy-lift launch vehicle classification.
The dearMoonproject was a planned lunar tourism mission and art project conceived and financed by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. The project concept was to have seen Maezawa and eight civilian artists fly a circumlunar trajectory around the Moon aboard a SpaceX Starship spacecraft.
Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster is an electric sports car that served as the dummy payload for the February 2018 Falcon Heavy test flight and became an artificial satellite of the Sun. A mannequin in a spacesuit, dubbed "Starman", occupies the driver's seat. The car and rocket are products of Tesla and SpaceX, respectively, both companies headed by Elon Musk. The 2010 Roadster is personally owned by and previously used by Musk for commuting to work. It is the first production car launched into space.
The Falcon Heavy test flight was the first attempt by SpaceX to launch a Falcon Heavy rocket on February 6, 2018, at 20:45 UTC. The successful test introduced the Falcon Heavy as the most powerful rocket in operation at the time, producing five million pounds-force (22 MN) of thrust and having more than twice the payload capacity of the next most powerful rocket, United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy.
Starship is a two-stage super heavy-lift launch vehicle under development by SpaceX. As of May 2024, it is the largest and most powerful rocket ever flown. Starship's primary objective is to lower launch costs significantly via economies of scale. This is achieved by reusing both rocket stages, increasing payload mass to orbit, increasing launch frequency, creating a mass-manufacturing pipeline, and adapting it to a wide range of space missions. Starship is the latest project in SpaceX's decades-long reusable launch system development program and ambition of colonizing Mars.
Beresheet was a demonstrator of a small robotic lunar lander and lunar probe operated by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries. Its aims included inspiring youth and promoting careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and landing its magnetometer, time capsule, and laser retroreflector on the Moon. The lander's gyroscopes failed on 11 April 2019 causing the main engine to shut off, which resulted in the lander crashing on the Moon. Its final resting position is 32.5956°N, 19.3496°E.
Starship HLS is a lunar lander variant of the Starship spacecraft that is slated to transfer astronauts from a lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon and back. It is being designed and built by SpaceX under the Human Landing System contract to NASA as a critical element of NASA's Artemis program to land a crew on the Moon.
On April 11, 2019, the Israeli spacecraft Beresheet crashed into the Moon during a failed landing attempt. Its payload included a few thousand tardigrades. Initial reports suggested they could have survived the crash landing. If any of them did survive, they would be the tenth species to reach the surface of the Moon, after humans, brought by the American Apollo program, and fruit flies, silkworms, cottonseed, potato, rapeseed, Arabidopsis thaliana, as well as yeast--the latter seven all brought to the moon by China's Chang'e 4.
We believe the chances of survival for the tardigrades... are extremely high.