February 21, 2024
3 min read
A lunar lander nicknamed Odie carries 125 small moon sculptures by artist Jeff Koons that could become the first authorized artwork on the moon
Close-up of a memorial plaque on the Moon at Hadley-Apennine site, honoring 14 deceased NASA astronauts and USSR cosmonauts. Astronauts David R. Scott and James B. Irwin installed it during Apollo 15’s lunar surface activity. The figurine symbolizes fallen space explorers.
If all goes smoothly, the moon’s robotic population will increase by one on February 22 with the scheduled touchdown of the NASA-funded lander Odysseus, nicknamed Odie. Among its cargo are 125 miniature sculptures of the moon that their creator, artist Jeff Koons, has billed as “the first authorized artwork on the moon.”
Launched on February 15, Odie was built by the Houston-based company Intuitive Machines. It carries six NASA instruments, as well as a host of commercial payloads, including the Koons moons. Each one-inch moon headed to the lunar surface has two counterparts that will stay on Earth: a larger statue and a digital version in the form of a nonfungible token, or NFT.
“Authorized” is an important word when billing the sculpture as a “first” on the moon. Even if the Intuitive Machines landing goes smoothly, Koons’s sculptures probably won’t be the first art to touch down on our closest companion in space—although the matter is surprisingly slippery.
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The lead contender for the first art on the moon would have touched down in 1969 on the lunar module of the Apollo 12 mission. Dubbed the “Moon Museum,” the piece was a stamp-sized tile sporting drawings by six leading artists of the time, including Andy Warhol and…
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