APOLLO 11 GOODWILL SILICON DISC
FROM PLANET EARTH JULY 1969
The words on the disc - which is about the size of a US 50 cent piece will remain readable through a miscroscope. At the top of the disc is the inscription: Goodwill messages from around the world brought to the Moon by the astronauts of Apollo 11. Around the disc you can read: From Planet Earth -- July 1969 The disk was transported in an aluminium capsule and is (hopefully) still in the capsule on the lunar surface.
The disk carries the goodwill statements by Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon and messages from leaders of 73 countries around the world. The disc also carries a listing of the leadership of the US Congress, a listing of members of the four committees of the House and Senate responsible for the NASA legislation, and the names of NASA's past and present top management.
The same process used in making integrated circuits produced the message disk. First the messages were photographed and the photo reduced 200 times. The resulting image was transferred to glass which was used as a mask through which ultra-violet light was beamed on-to a photosensitive film on the silicon disc. After a photo development step, the disc was washed with hydroflouric acid which accomlished the final etching.
Text: NASA
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left more than just their boot prints on the Moon. Resting in the dust at Tranquility Base, within a silver-anodized aluminium capsule, there’s a coin-sized disc containing messages from the leaders of 74 countries, including a highly decorative note from the Vatican signed by Pope Paul VI, wishing goodwill to any astral travellers who happen to find it.
The disc was made by NASA’s Electronics Research Center and the Sprague Electric Co’s Semi-Conductor division, who used the process with which they made electronic circuits to etch the messages into the disc – with ultraviolet light, a Kodak photosensitive resist and Kodak high-resolution plates.
The messages – both typed and handwritten – were reduced in size 200 times, to become barely visible dots, and etched into an ultra-thin layer of quartz that coated the silicon disc.
Around the rim of the disc, there’s a timestamp: “From Planet Earth, July 1969.”
As silicon can withstand the extremes of temperature found on the Moon, it should remain there for a long while yet.
Text: Kodak
