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Arch Mission Foundation

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Arch Mission Foundation
FormationOctober 24, 2016; 8 years ago (2016-10-24)[1]
Spring, Texas, U.S.
FoundersNova Spivack
Nick Slavin
TypeNon-profit
81-3446615
PurposeCultural preservation
Location
  • Spring, Texas, U.S.
    Los Angeles, California    , U.S.[2]
Key people
Nova Spivack, co-founder
Nick Slavin, co-founder
WebsiteArchMission.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]

Project

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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]

Data Archives

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Arch disks 1 through 5

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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]

Solar Library

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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]

Lunar Library

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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]

Method of storing information

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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]

Other projects

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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 a partnership with Astrobotic Technology 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]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Nova Spivack (September 2, 2015). "Let's Put the Wikipedia in Space: The Arch Project". Archived from the original on May 27, 2020. Retrieved February 25, 2020.
  2. ^ "About Our Mission". Arch Mission. Archived from the original on April 14, 2018. Retrieved April 13, 2018.
  3. ^ Shields, Jesslyn (March 8, 2019). "The Lunar Library: A Backup of Human Knowledge Is Going to the Moon". HowStuffWorks. Retrieved March 28, 2021.
  4. ^ May, Patrick (February 7, 2018). "Elon Musk Sent Up Something Else Unusual in That Rocket Besides a Tesla". Mercury News. Archived from the original on April 14, 2018. Retrieved April 13, 2018.
  5. ^ Robitzski, Dan (February 25, 2019). "Israeli Moon Lander Is Carrying a Vast Backup of Human Knowledge". Futurism. Retrieved March 28, 2021.
  6. ^ Clemens, Danny (February 10, 2018). "The SpaceX launch included a small library that could orbit the Sun for millions of years". ABC 30 Action News. Archived from the original on February 14, 2018. Retrieved February 14, 2018.
  7. ^ Berman, Robby (February 13, 2018). "Hidden on the Falcon Heavy were the first books for a space library". Big Think. Archived from the original on February 15, 2018. Retrieved February 14, 2018.
  8. ^ a b Morris, David Z. (February 10, 2018). "Elon Musk Sent This Classic Sci-Fi Novel Into Space on the Falcon Heavy". Fortune. Archived from the original on April 14, 2018. Retrieved April 13, 2018.
  9. ^ a b c d e f g Rafi Letzter (February 9, 2018). "The Most Interesting Thing Shot into Space This Week Wasn't a Tesla". Live Science. Archived from the original on March 16, 2018. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  10. ^ "Arch Library Created Using 5D Optical Storage Technology". Storage Newsletter. February 14, 2018. Archived from the original on April 14, 2018. Retrieved April 13, 2018.
  11. ^ "Optical 'Superman' memory flies with orbiting Tesla". Optics. February 7, 2018. Archived from the original on February 7, 2018. Retrieved February 17, 2018.
  12. ^ a b Peter Dockrill (February 12, 2018). "SpaceX Hid a Second, Secret Payload Aboard Falcon Heavy, And It Sounds Amazing". Science Alert. Archived from the original on February 17, 2018. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
  13. ^ a b Chris Taylor (February 9, 2018). "Forget the Tesla, Elon Musk launched the first books in an ever-lasting space library". Mashable. Archived from the original on February 18, 2018. Retrieved February 17, 2018.
  14. ^ Olson, Eric (February 14, 2018). "Backing Up Humanity: First Arch Launched on Falcon Heavy". Engineering360. Archived from the original on February 15, 2018. Retrieved February 14, 2018.
  15. ^ Gohd, Chelsea (February 12, 2018). "Everything You Need to Know about SpaceX's Secret Falcon Heavy Payload". Futurism. Archived from the original on April 14, 2018. Retrieved April 13, 2018.
  16. ^ Pearlman, Robert Z. (February 7, 2018). "'A Car in Deep Space': Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster Leaves Earth With 'Easter Eggs'". Space.com. Archived from the original on April 14, 2018. Retrieved April 13, 2018.
  17. ^ Malik, Tariq (February 7, 2018). "Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster is Headed to the Asteroid Belt". Space.com. Archived from the original on April 14, 2018. Retrieved April 13, 2018.
  18. ^ Taylor, Chris (April 16, 2019). "There may be a copy of Wikipedia somewhere on the moon. Here's how to help find it". Mashable. Retrieved March 28, 2021.
  19. ^ Pignataro, Juliana Rose (July 2, 2019). "What's Your Moonshot? One Man's Quest for a Billion Year Archive Stored in the Solar System". Newsweek. Retrieved March 28, 2021.
  20. ^ Oberhaus, Daniel (August 5, 2019). "A Crashed Israeli Lunar Lander Spilled Tardigrades on the Moon". Wired. Retrieved March 28, 2021.
  21. ^ Karlis, Nicole (August 9, 2019). "Private Israeli spacecraft may have contaminated the Moon". Salon. Retrieved March 28, 2021.
  22. ^ Cape, Jessi (February 22, 2019). "Mayor Adler Sends Kerbey Queso Recipe to the Moon on a SpaceX Rocket ... Seriously". The Austin Chronicle. Retrieved March 28, 2021.
  23. ^ updated, Andrew Jones last (February 22, 2024). "Here's what just landed on the moon aboard Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lander". Space.com. Retrieved February 23, 2024.
  24. ^ Oberhaus, Daniel. "A Crashed Israeli Spacecraft Spilled Tardigrades on the Moon". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved January 9, 2022.
  25. ^ Moskowitz, Clara. "DNA-Coded "Lunar Library" Aims to Preserve Civilization for Millennia". Scientific American. Retrieved January 9, 2022.
  26. ^ "Lunar library to include photos, books stored in DNA". UW News. Retrieved January 9, 2022.
  27. ^ "The Arch Mission Foundation and SpaceChain Create Orbital Library". Archived from the original on February 4, 2019. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
  28. ^ "The Arch Mission Foundation Announces Launch of Lunar Library Aboard Beresheet Lander – Parabolic Arc". Archived from the original on November 21, 2019. Retrieved May 26, 2020.
  29. ^ "First private spacecraft gearing up for Moon landing". Archived from the original on February 21, 2019. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
  30. ^ "Beresheet crashed on the moon, but its 'Lunar Library' likely survived". Archived from the original on May 23, 2019. Retrieved May 23, 2019.
  31. ^ "There may be a copy of Wikipedia somewhere on the moon. Here's how to help find it". Mashable. April 17, 2019. Archived from the original on May 27, 2019. Retrieved May 23, 2019.
  32. ^ Boyle, Alan (May 15, 2018). "Arch Mission teams up with Astrobotic to send Wikipedia and more to the moon". GeekWire. Retrieved March 28, 2021.
  33. ^ "The Lunar Library II (Astrobotic, 2021)". Arch Mission Foundation. Retrieved March 28, 2021.
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