30-million-page library of human civilization makes its way to the moon

Mankind can soon have a backup of human knowledge should civilization on earth collapse, thanks to a 30-million page library of human history that is on its way to the moon.

The “Lunar Library” was carried by Israel’s Beresheet spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on February 21, reports WBUR. It is currently orbiting the earth and it is expected to land on April 11, 2019.

Created by the Los Angeles-based nonprofit, Arch Mission Foundation, the library contains tens of thousands of books, images, and the entire English language Wikipedia.

The Arch Mission earlier described the library as a “billion-year backup of planet Earth” and said that it is “the first library on another celestial body.”

The project has been ongoing since 2005 with the aim to build a solar system-sized library that could be useful as mankind colonizes more planets, said Nick Spivack, co-founder and chairman of the Arch Mission Foundation.

“It signifies that we are becoming a multiplanetary species. It’s also a good backup to have in case anything goes seriously wrong on Earth,” he told the Daily News.

All the information needed is stored in a nanotechnology device that looks like a DVD.

“Within the disks are 60,000 analogue images of pages of books, photographs, illustrations and documents. There are also sections that include more than a million concepts in pictures and corresponding words across major languages, text from the English Wikipedia, thousands of PDFs of books and a linguistic key to 5,000 languages,” the report by Daily News added.

To ensure that all information above is well protected, the Arch Foundation helped develop a durable data-recording technology called Nanofiche for the Lunar Library disc.

“It can withstand sustained heat that is 10 times greater than what is experienced on the moon with no damage to the data,” Spivack was quoted by NBC News.

The Lunar Library was inspired by Elon Musk’s favourite novel series, Foundation, written in 1951 at the height of the Cold War, said Ancient Code.

“The Foundation series posits that there exists a way to quantify the history of the world/universe. It’s an attempt to mathematize the often irrational history of man,” writes David Friedman in Quora.

“The scientists in the series believe that preserving human knowledge will jumpstart civilization again from the impending dark ages”, the Ancient Code adds.

The mission of Arch Foundation is not only to send a record of history to the moon but to place copies all across the solar system including in deep caves, mountains and underwater.

Three pieces of the library space are currently available. In 2018, Arch Mission’s first launch was a small test version that is now orbiting the sun. That same year, the foundation also sent a copy of the English Wikipedia to orbit Earth on a SpaceChain satellite in 2018. The Beresheet spacecraft is set to land on the moon with the first piece of the Lunar Library in April.

The Foundation believes that the move is to ensure the future of the human race.

“As a futurist, I can tell you with certainty, that in the future, they got a lot of things wrong about the past. Unless we do something to help the future recall the past better, today. Help us save humanity. To disc.”

Scientists say that below is the location where the Lunar Libary will be located when the Beresheet spacecraft touches down in April: