The last pictures trevor paglen photos
The last pictures trevor paglen photos
Trevor paglen patches!
Photo Album of Human History Launched into Space
A new communications spacecraft being hurled into the heavens might seem like ho-hum news, but one particular satellite is carrying what may be one of the longest-lasting material artifacts of contemporary civilization.
Artist Trevor Paglen's "The Last Pictures" is an archival disc containing 100 photographs representing modern human history — a disc affixed to the exterior of the newly lofted EchoStar XVI satellite.
The full artifact attached to the spacecraft is composed of two interlocking gold-plated aluminum jackets housing the silicon disc on which the photographs are nano-etched.
The gold-plated shell was designed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Carleton College.
And just in case visitors from afar happen upon EchoStar XVI, there's a cover etching, a temporal map consisting of a star chart, pulsar timings and other information describing the epoch from which the spacecraft came.
[Art Time Capsul