On the eve of the winter solstice, SpaceIL and the Arch Mission Foundation announced the Billion Year Archive. My work will arrive on the surface of the Moon in 2019 as part of the BERESHEET mission. A Brief History of Archiving Civilization includes:

• an introductory essay
• Epoch Marker, to help future intelligences pinpoint when the artifact was made
• Westinghouse Time Capsule materials
• Voyager Golden Record materials
• Earth Tapestry, to highlight important features on the planet
• poems on the passage of time and the preservation of memory

For more than a decade I have been creating these and other projects to be preserved on the surface of the Moon. It feels wonderful yet somehow unreal that some of my efforts will actually, finally be landing there soon.

I’m grateful to the Arch Mission Foundation to allow my work to take a prominent role in this Billion Year Archive, in what we hope is just the first in a series of Archives of Civilization. It has been a joy to work with them.