Jersey City Poet and Author Megha Sood's Editorial Anthology “The Medusa Project” is heading for the moon as part of the LUNAR CODEX PROJECT. As an arts and culture project, The Lunar Codex is the most expansive, international, and diverse collection of contemporary culture launched to the Moon. Significantly, it is the first project to launch the works of women artists to the lunar surface.
THE LUNAR CODEX is launching the works of 6000 contemporary creative artists (Plus one A.I) in three Lunar Time Capsules namely Peregrine, Polaris, and Nova.
The Polaris Collection of the LunarCodex, in a time capsule, is slated for the Lunar South Pole on the Astrobotic Griffin / SpaceX / NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration VIPER Rover mission (Griffin Mission One - GM1) in 2023.
Megha Sood, a Poet, Editor, Author, and Literary activist residing in Jersey City is one of the few creatives whose editorial anthology “The Medusa Project” will be part of the Polaris Collection heading for the Lunar South Pole in 2023.
The anthology has been co-edited by her and the UK-based poet and artist, Juliette Van der Molen, and features 50+ women creative across the globe. The e-anthology which is Megha Sood’s editorial debut is curated to celebrate the 100 years of the suffragist movement in the United States that led to the 19th amendment of the US Constitution allowing women to vote. The e-anthology was published by a UK-based Arts and Literary Journal, MookyChick.
"The Medusa Project" is listed under the Books carried as the digital payload here.
Thrilled and ecstatic Megha Sood says that ” This whole thing seems unreal to me that I never believed that my debut anthology featuring the work of the women creatives can lead to this miraculous event. She proudly states poetry is essential to reach every nook and corner of the universe.”
Megha Sood is a 2020 Poet Fellowship Recipient from Martha Institute of Creative Writing Institute, 2020 National Level Winner from Poetry Matters Project, and Three-time State Winner of the NAMI NJ Poetry Contest. She is also a recipient of the “Certificate of Excellence” from the Mayor, Jersey City, and an Associate Poetry Editor Literary Journals Mookychick(UK), Life and Legends (USA).
She is also the author of a recently published chapbook ( “My Body is Not an Apology”, Finishing Line Press, 2021) and a Full-Length Poetry collection (“My Body Lives Like a Threat”, FlowerSongPress,2021). She blogs at meghasworldsite.wordpress.com and tweets at @meghasood16.
About the Lunar Codex
The U.S.'s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a plan, the Artemis Program, to land humans back on the Moon - targeted for 2024 - for the first time in over 50 years. In preparation, NASA will send scientific instruments to the Moon, over 2021 to 2023, via Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) partners, such as Astrobotic Technologies and Intuitive Machines. Their lunar landers will launch via commercial rocket platforms by the United Launch Alliance (ULA)or SpaceX.
Along with NASA instruments, these missions will carry commercial payloads, including the time capsules that make up The Lunar Codex. The three-time capsules are Peregrine, Nova, and Polaris. The Polaris Collection, the third time capsule, is the payload associated with an Astrobotic Griffin/NASA VIPER mission, landing in the vicinity of the Lunar South Pole in 2023.
The centerpieces of Peralta's payload are the 21 volumes of his own Future Chronicles anthologies, all Amazon bestsellers, and 15 PoetsArtists art magazines and exhibition catalogs, one of which he helmed as guest curator for publisher and art curator Didi Menendez. Each individual volume provided scores of curated contemporary art and short stories for the time capsule.
Together with other art books, anthologies, novels, music, and screenplays, including for the short film Real Artists, which won an Emmy Award in 2019, he and his colleagues have digitized literally thousands of art and fiction for the trip to the Moon.
Peralta, a physicist, and entrepreneur, is also an author, whose fiction has hit the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller lists, and whose poetry has won awards worldwide. The Collection represents creative artists from all over the globe, including from Canada, the US, the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Australia, Sri Lanka, Singapore, and the Philippines. Included in it is a collaborative human-AI work of poetry between Peralta and OSUN, an OpenAI-based machine programmed by Sri Lankan author and researcher Yudhanjaya Wijeratne.
As Dr. Samuel Peralta, payload coordinator and curator, notes: "Our hope is that future travelers who find these time capsules will discover some of the richness of our world today. It speaks to the idea that, despite wars and pandemics and climate upheaval, humankind found time to dream, time to create art.”
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