Leaving a permanent record of humanity on the moon – in 100 billion pixels

Sanctuary on the Moon founder Benoit Faiveley looks at the Life disk, one of 24 discs that will be left on the moon for future humans to discover, at the Inria Saclay Research Centre in Paris [Courtesy of Benedict Redgrove]

With a population of just over 5,000, the French village of Nuit-Saint-Georges may be small, but this pastoral Burgundy hamlet has an oversized connection to the moon.

It is the birthplace of famed 19th-century astronomer Felix Tisserand, whose name was given to the Tisserand crater located in a vast lunar plain known as the Sea of Serenity. He was the contemporary of French novelist Jules Verne, author of From the Earth to the Moon – the first book to imagine such a journey – in which its characters celebrate their arrival with a bottle of wine from Nuit-Saint-Georges.