ZIONSVILLE, Ind. — Artwork from the Hoosier state is out of this world. A poem written by a Zionsville artist and several others will now be featured on the moon.
Joyce Brinkman has always loved writing about the moon. Now, her poem will forever live on the moon.
She is among 10 other Indiana poets who collaborated on a poem about Indiana rivers. While Brinkman isn't sure why her poem was chosen, she believes the collaborative effort and the focus of the poem is connected to NASA's mission of having water on the moon.
She hopes astronauts will enjoy her artwork in the future.
"They'll be rotating in to be able to do whatever work needs to be done there, and culture will be there," Brinkman said. "So, this lander, which all this stuff is connected to, is like a museum, a library. It's there. It's staying there."
Her poem is among movies, music, sculptures, novels and all kinds of art that were chosen from around the world. It will be viewable only digitally on the moon.
Visitors can see the painted version of her poem at the SullivanMunce Cultural Center in Zionsville.
Intuitive Machines is striving to become the first private business to successfully pull off a lunar landing, a feat achieved by only five countries. A rival company’s lander missed the moon last month.
The landing is now anticipated for 4:24 p.m. ET on Thursday, Feb. 22, according to NASA.
The newest lander, named Odysseus, reached the moon Wednesday, six days after rocketing from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The lander maneuvered into a low lunar orbit in preparation for a late afternoon touchdown.
Flight controllers monitored the action unfolding some 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) away from a command center at company headquarters in Houston.
The six-footed carbon fiber and titanium lander — towering 14 feet (4.3 meters) — carried six experiments for NASA. The space agency gave the company $118 million to build and fly the lander, part of its effort to commercialize lunar deliveries ahead of the planned return of astronauts in a few years.
Intuitive Machines' entry is the latest in a series of landing attempts by countries and private outfits looking to explore the moon and, if possible, capitalize on it. Japan scored a lunar landing last month, joining earlier triumphs by Russia, U.S., China and India.