Jeff Koons to send sculptures to the Moon for permanent installation

US artist may have ignited a space race with Sacha Jafri, who recently announced he would be sending the first authorised artwork to the Moon

American pop artist Jeff Koons is to send sculptures to the Moon later this year on a spacecraft blasting off from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. AFP

In February, Sacha Jafri announced he will be sending the first official artwork to the Moon.

An engraved plate of aerospace-grade aluminium gold, the artwork, called We Rise Together — with the Light of the Moon, is set to be launched sometime later this year with the Nasa Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative.

Sacha Jafri announced sending the first artwork to the Moon at a press conference at Expo 2020 Dubai on Wednesday, February 23. All photos by Antonie Robertson / The National

An engraved plate of aerospace-grade aluminium gold, the artwork 'We Rise Together — with the Light of the Moon' was created by British artist Sacha Jafri.

Jafri’s artwork will be placed on the Moon with the help of Selenian, a UAE-based company that specialises in the curation of art in space, as well as Spacebit, Astrobotic and Nasa through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. Pictured is Pavlo Tanasyuk from Spacebit.

The artwork is set to go into space at some point in the second half of 2022.

Sacha Jafri, second right, is on stage with James Khazaei, Co-Founder of Selenian and Pavlo Tanasyuk from Spacebit.

In addition to We Rise Together — with the Light of the Moon, five charitable NFTs from Jafri will also be launched to commemorate each stage of the mission: the rocket entering the stratosphere, the circumnavigation of the Earth, the Moon slingshot, the landing and the legacy of artwork on the Moon.

But Jafri might have a contender in his bid to become the first artist to have a piece of work installed on the lunar surface.

Jeff Koons has now revealed plans of sending sculptures to the Moon. The artist, perhaps best known for his metallic balloon dog sculptures, will be creating a series of works that will be launched into space from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

The sculptures will be left as a permanent installation on the moon. They will be housed in a transparent, thermally-coated miniature satellite.

The project, Moon Phases, will also have a “historically meaningful NFT” component, the American artist said. The sculptures will each have a corresponding NFT. Proceeds from the NFT sales will be donated to Doctors Without Borders.

Pace Gallery’s NFT gallery Pace Verso is organising the project and the NFT sales. Intuitive Machines is creating the lunar lander. 4Space and NFMoon are also involved in the project.

Like with Jafri’s project, a launch date for Jeff Koons: Moon Phases has not been specified. However, they are both scheduled for later this year to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the last manned Moon mission, the Apollo 17 landing in 1972.

The 12-day mission broke many records, including the longest crewed lunar landing mission, the greatest distance gone from a spacecraft during an extravehicular trip at 7.6 kilometres, and the longest total lunar surface extravehicular activities at 22 hours and 40 minutes. It even brought back 115 kilograms of Moon samples, making it the largest lunar sample return.