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Leaving a permanent record of humanity on the moon – in 100B pixels

‘Sanctuary on the Moon’ is a lunar time capsule that provides a detailed guide to life on Earth for our future selves.

This wall is the biggest ‘pinch-to-zoom display’ in Europe and enables the team to check all the content on the discs [Courtesy of Vincent Thomas] The inspiration for Sanctuary on the Moon came from a similar endeavour nearly 50 years ago: the Golden Records that were affixed to the two Voyager spacecraft. The time capsule contents will be comprised of 24 discs, each a mere 10 centimetres in diameter, engraved with as many as seven billion pixels of information delving into a specific realm of knowledge: Matter and Atoms, Space and Universe, Life and Biology, maps of female and male genomes, and so on. Members of the Sanctuary team look at some of the designs of the Life disc on the images wall, at Inria Saclay, Paris [Courtesy of Benedict Redgrove] In an era of rising global conflict, nuclear proliferation and climate change, it’s not difficult to see how a time capsule exploring who we are today and where we’re heading tomorrow may raise disquieting questions.

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