KOREAN NET

This is an artist's concept of Firefly Aerospace's lunar lander Blue Ghost. (Firefly Aerospace)

By Kim Seon Ah

Eleven sijo (traditional poems) will be sent to the moon on a rocket set for blastoff on Jan. 15 carrying a private U.S. lunar lander.

The Sejong Cultural Society, a Korean-American non-profit cultural foundation based in Chicago, said that day that Lunar Codex's "time capsule" containing 11 sijo will be carried by Firefly Aerospace's lunar lander Blue Ghost aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9. The launch is set for 1:30 a.m. on Jan. 15 (2:30 p.m. Korean Standard Time) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida.

Lunar Codex is a project for sending to the moon artworks including paintings, writing, music and films from over 40,000 creators worldwide. The works are engraved in analog form on materials such as nickel film or digitized and stored on memory cards.

Under the mission Codex Serenity, the venture features the poetry collection "Polaris Trilogy" commissioned by Lunar Codex including sijo.

The poems include Koo Choong-hoe's "To the Moon"; Kim Dal-ho's "Dream of a Meteor"; Kim Heung-yeol's "Galaxy"; Park Heon-oh's "Mysterious Sky Poetry Collection"; Seo Gwan-ho's "Moon of a Riverside Village"; Lee Gwang-nyeong's "Embracing the Sun"; Choi Eun-hee's "Moonlight Sonata"; and Chae Hyeon-byeong's "July 7 (based on the lunar calendar)." The remaining three are one by Lucy Park, secretary general of the society in Chicago, and two in English by Nancy Jorgensen and her daughter Elizabeth.

Blue Ghost is expected to land on March 1 on Mare Crisium, a basalt plain on the moon's northeastern side, about 45 days after launch. A successful landing would mean Korean data on the moon for the first time.

sofiakim218@korea.kr