Photo time capsule to last ‘billions of years’ in space
Designed to last billions of years, photo disc contains 100 black and white images.
(Credit: Creative Time )
“When humanity disappears, a ring of dead spacecraft will remain as evidence of our existence.”
That comforting thought is how nonprofit arts group Creative Time introduces a project by multimedia artist Trevor Paglen to put a photo time capsule in space, where it will orbit our planet for thousands of years, perhaps long after we’ve blown each other up or otherwise expired.
The Last Pictures is a gold-plated archival disc that contains 100 photos micro-etched in silicon in bitmap format.
Designed by engineers at MIT and Carleton College, the disc has been installed on the EchoStar XVI satellite, which is slated to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the next few months.
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