HUMANS

Humanity United with MIT Art and Nanotechnology in Space (HUMANS)

A Record of Our Voices

In an effort to increase global representation in space, the HUMANS project created a symbolic avenue for space access worldwide.

When The Golden Record was sent out on Voyager to portray Earth for extraterrestrials in 1977, it told a story of the diversity of lives and cultures on our home planet. Today, after a pandemic that hit all of us around the globe, ongoing conflicts and wars all around our planet, humanity needs unity more than ever. We wish to send a new "Record of Our Voices" to space. This time, the story is not for extraterrestrials, but for ourselves.

Thank you to all who joined our project by sending us a message in your native language, about the meaning of space to you and to humanity, in addition to an optional audio recording of your voice. Inspired by The Golden Record, we etched these messages onto a record.

The HUMANS project is a collaboration of art and science, bringing together experts from across MIT — with technical expertise from the departments of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Mechanical Engineering, and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; nano-etching and testing from MIT.nano; audio processing from the MIT Media Lab’s Opera of the Future and the Music and Theater Arts Section; and lunar mission support from the Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative.

While a 6-inch HUMANS wafer flew on the Axiom-2 mission to the International Space Station in 2023, the 2-inch wafer was a part of the IM-2 mission to the lunar south polar region, linked to the MIT Media Lab’s To the Moon to Stay program, which reimagines humankind’s return to the moon. IM-2 ended prematurely after the Athena spacecraft tipped onto its side shortly after landing in March, but the HUMANS wafer fulfilled its mission by successfully reaching the lunar surface.