Santa Monica residents had the chance last week to send personal messages to the Moon as part of an ambitious new partnership between the Fairmont Miramar Hotel & Bungalows and space technology firm Uplift Aerospace. The event, held Tuesday afternoon on the hotel’s West Lot, marked the public debut of the “Message to the Future” lunar time capsule initiative, which aims to combine community engagement with space exploration and STEM education.
The initiative, developed by Uplift Aerospace and its Starborn Academy division, invites participants to submit handwritten or artistic messages that will be etched onto a tile and attached to a lunar rover headed for the Moon later this year. All proceeds from message submissions at the Santa Monica event will go toward funding free STEM education programs for foster youth in Los Angeles County.
“This is a great venture. We want to grow this with other hotels in our LA community,” said Michael Lau, Regional Director of Sales and Marketing for the Fairmont Miramar. “We’re a community hotel and we want to bring people together. We thought this was a great time to partner up with an entity that does good for children.”
Dozens of attendees braved rare June rain to participate in the event, which included a demonstration of Astrolab’s FLIP rover, virtual reality simulations of spaceflight and a meet-and-greet with geoscientist, artist and commercial astronaut Dr. Sian Proctor, who piloted SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission in 2021.
Proctor, who became the first African American woman to pilot a spacecraft, told the crowd that she was born during the Apollo era on the island of Guam, where her father worked for NASA. She recalled watching American launches as a child and dreaming of space while dressed in an orange flight suit.
“I was a moon celebration baby,” she said adding, “I was born eight and a half months after Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the Moon. I’ve been chasing space my whole life.”
Her journey to space was sealed by a poem she posted online in 2020, which won her a seat on the first all-civilian orbital mission aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule. The poem, titled “Space to Inspire,” advocates for what she calls a “JEDI space,” a vision of future exploration that is Just, Equitable, Diverse and Inclusive.
The phrase has since become a guiding principle in her public outreach efforts, including the current time capsule project. Proctor is also contributing a physical artwork that will ride atop the FLIP rover. The piece is designed to be photographed on the Moon with Earth visible in the background.
“There are people who are striving for an apocalyptic future because it’s their way of claiming power,” Proctor said during a conversation at the event. “But we have the example of the future we want and that is Star Trek. When you bring in hope, you have to actively engage in creating that future.”
The rover, developed by Hawthorne-based Astrolab, is a tech demonstration platform designed to test critical systems ahead of future lunar cargo missions. According to Astrolab Business Development Director Kelly Randell, the FLIP rover shares core technology with the company’s larger FLEX vehicle, which is slated to carry cargo on future NASA and commercial missions.
The FLIP rover will launch as part of Astrobotic’s Griffin Mission-1, using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Once the spacecraft reaches the lunar surface, the rover will deploy, search for a thermal hibernation site and begin its operations.
“We’re hoping this is what we’ll see in December,” Randell said. “This is also the vehicle that we’re putting the messages to the Moon on.”
Messages submitted at the Fairmont event will be combined with thousands of student entries from across the country. The words most commonly used so far, according to a running analysis by Uplift Aerospace, include “hope,” “future,” “believe,” “create,” “imagine” and “learn.”
Josh Hanes, Uplift Aerospace CEO and Founder, said that a digital and physical archive of all messages will be created. The nano-inscribed tile will be affixed to the rover itself, while Proctor’s artwork will serve as a visual anchor to the broader mission.
“We want to create this time capsule for future generations to capture this moment,” Hanes said. “It’s going to be buried, so to speak, in that it will remain on the rover and potentially be recovered someday.”
Lau said they plan to make the Moon message initiative an ongoing opportunity for guests and community members, with future activations to be announced. For now, submissions can be made through the hotel, with all funds going toward Starborn Academy’s foster youth programming.
“We’re the place to be for the community,” Lau said. “We put our heart and soul into each of these events. We want them to succeed because we know how important it is to Santa Monica.”
Cambria Mendez, Director of Marketing for the hotel agreed. “This is really exciting. Who doesn’t want to write a letter to space?”
Proctor, whose space suit will go on display this summer at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum, said the program is about giving kids permission to imagine bold futures and helping them take steps to get there.
“You can’t be what you can’t see,” she said. “That’s why we’re doing this. To make sure the next generation can see themselves in space.”
scott.snowden@smdp.com