Moon

Fallen Astronaut is an Aluminum sculpture created by Belgian artist Paul Van Hoeydonck, left on the surface of the Moon. It is a stylized figure of an astronaut in a spacesuit, intended to commemorate the astronauts and cosmonauts who have died in the advancement of space exploration. It was commissioned and placed on the Moon by the crew of Apollo 15 at Hadley Rille on August 2, 1971, UTC, next to a plaque listing 14 names of those who died up to that time.

Figure 1. Fallen Astronaut - by Paul van Hoeydonck, NASA https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/photo.pl?mission=AS15&roll=88&frame=11894

The Moon Museum is thought to be the first artwork to have traveled to the moon. American sculptor Forrest Myers worked with scientists from Bell Laboratories to produce an edition of tiny ceramic tiles onto which drawings by him and five other artists were inscribed. He reported that he had one of the tiles covertly attached to the Apollo 12 spacecraft and that it was left on the moon along with other personal effects transported by the astronauts.(Source: Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art)

Figure 2. The Moon Museum- Various Artists, MOMA https://www.moma.org/collection/works/62272