Fallen Astronaut, 1971

Fun fact: almost as soon as people started walking on the moon, they started to put art on the moon.

In 1969, Nasa landed the first astronauts on the moon. It was a relatively short stay given the distance they had traveled to get there and the years of work preparing for the voyage. Most people don’t know this, but just a few years later, the Apollo 15 crew left an astronaut behind to remain on the moon since 1971. 

It all started here on earth at a dinner party. Paul van Hoeydonck a Belgian artist known for his paintings and prints, was attending a dinner parity where he met David Scott, one of the astronauts slated to go to the moon on the Apollo 15 mission. As they were talking they started thinking about the monumental achievement of putting people in outer space and on the moon, all the teams of scientists working for years building off the work of previous generations and of course those who had made the ultimate sacrifice losing their lives in the pursuit of advancing space exploration.

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