Apollo, space shuttle astronauts become literal faces of moonbound payload

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Apollo 16 astronaut and moon walker Charlie Duke left a family photo on the lunar surface in 1972.

It’s long gone, but a digital copy is headed back in a data storage payload aboard Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander that launched Wednesday night from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-A atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Duke, one of only four surviving men who walked on the moon, joined fellow astronaut Nicole Stott, a veteran of multiple space shuttle flights, at a ceremony at the KSC Visitor Complex, to receive a replica of the Athena lander. The pair’s profiles were incorporated into the artistic design of St. Petersburg-based company Lonestar Data Holding’s “Freedom” data center that’s been attached to the Athena lander.

The 3D-printed exterior design from Bjarke Ingels Group envisions it would cast a shadow of Duke’s face upon the lunar surface at lunar sunrise and Stott’s face at lunar sunset. The duo are members of the Lonestar advisory board.

Duke said that when he was training in the years ahead of his Apollo 16 launch April 16, 1972 in Florida, his two sons were living in Houston. When he launched, his elder son Charles was 7 and younger son Tom was nearly 5.

“So to get the boys involved and the family involved, I said, ‘Let’s take a picture, and I’ll take it to the moon,'” he said. “I got permission to drop it on the moon, and so when I dropped it, it landed face up. So I was very fortunate. I reached down and took a picture of the picture.”

But the surface temperature on the moon was about 210 degrees Fahrenheit, he said.

“This plastic picture didn’t last very long. It started curling up, but I got a picture before it curled up, and now it’s just ash after 50 years,” he said. “Nothing left of it. But it was a very special moment for me to have an opportunity to leave the family picture on the moon, the only one that was taken to the moon. So that was very special.”

Lonestar founder and CEO, as well as Nicole Stott’s husband, Chris Stott, explained this is the second data center to head to the moon. The first flew up on Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander in 2024.

The company worked with Space Florida on the project and demonstrated the ability to send data up to what Chris Stott calls “Earth’s largest satellite.”

It transmitted a copy of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.

He said the company’s purpose is develop a planetary backup “away from the disasters, wars, accidents and everything down here.”

The moon has free energy, free cooling and line-of-sight communications.

“As Nicole likes to say, the moon is so good for data storage. If it wasn’t there we’d have to build it,” he said. “Fantastically stable place.”

For this trip, in addition to the Duke family photo, this data storage device will have information from 14 nongovernmental and charitable organizations, six governments — including more from the state of Florida — and more.

The mission will include data transfer, while Athena is in transit, and then once again when it’s on the moon. Lonestar worked with Phison Electronics to make the interior of the data center resilient against the moon’s harsh temperature changes and radiation.

Nicole Stott, a 1992 UCF graduate, flew twice on Space Shuttle Discovery — first on STS-128 in 2009 and then the orbiter’s final flight, STS-133, in 2011 — all the while spending 91 days in space during her career. She also made the first painting in space.

“Astronauts have brought creativity with them since the very beginning,” she said. “I would argue that our engineers all along have done that too, even if it wasn’t intentionally, from a beauty or aesthetic standpoint.”

To that end, she appreciates the creative element incorporated into Lonestar’s functional payload.

“This is the way we put the ‘human’ in ‘human spaceflight,'” she said. “I think it’s the way we establish a relationship with humanity so that they understand what we’re doing in places like this, the exploration and the science and the kind of the first steps to exploring even further is all about improving life on Earth.”

“It’s all about us, and I think there’s no better way to do that then to employ a creative element to it,” she added.

She said she likes seeing what her shadow will look like on the moon as well.

Plus the story of Charlie’s family photo brought that human element home.

“I think it’s really important that we don’t forget about the human implications of all of this, which are really big and beneficial,” she said.

She talked about how this mission feeds into what is the bigger picture for what could be a massive lunar infrastructure in the future — something Duke is looking forward to, as well.

“We’ll eventually build a space home on the moon, and I think I’m not going to be around for that long, just to see it get started is going to be very meaningful to me,” Duke said.

The 89-year-old became the youngest of the 12 men who walked on the moon during his 1972 mission.

“I’d love to go back to the moon, and I still pass a NASA flight physical, but NASA says, ‘Don’t call us. We’ll call you,'” he said while adding he was rooting for NASA’s Artemis program to return humans there. “It’s about time we got back.”

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