Local designer's invention part of payload bound for moon

Private company trying to land on Moon

This week the NOVA-C lander will descend onto the south pole of the moon. The mission would be the first moon landing led by a private company.

LOS ANGELES - "One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind."

That's what astronaut Neil Armstrong famously said as he stepped onto the moon in 1969. That was the first of six manned missions to the moon, the last of which was in 1972. Then last week NASA, SpaceX and an American company called Intuitive Machines launched an unmanned rocket with a number of payloads to the moon.

Its mission is to confirm what only scans have shown so far — that there is ice on the southern pole of the moon, which means there's water. That's what would be needed for life and possible future settlements.

Dalia MacPhee is ecstatic about the mission. We first met the LA designer in 2018, when she showed us a fireproof horse blanket she invented. This after San Diego County's Lilac Fire a year earlier in which 46 horses died. MacPhee's hope was that her new creation might prevent such deaths in the future.

She adapted the invention for other animals like rhinos and elephants, and now her blankets and other fashions are on the way to the moon. She feels out of this world.

"I can't explain what that feels like," she said. "It's quite surreal to be honest."

Dallas Santana is the payload curator at Space Blue in Beverly Hills. He said they picked Dalia's work to put in the payload because, "She's always doing something cutting edge, and space is cutting edge. Dalia is known for being loving to animals as well. I think this is part of the human journey."

And, it's that "human journey" that Santana is trying to show in the payload he and his team curated. It includes 77,000 artifacts from 222 projects etched onto various nickel plates where the images can be seen by the naked eye.

There's also a Stan Lee universe that's not Marvel, but a universe called Legion. He said in the payload there's "Artwork and characters that have never been seen in the world before by his fans and notes taken at some of his last meetings."

Two weeks after landing on the moon in 1969, here on Earth, we had Woodstock. Santana said, "We felt it was important to go and gather some of these Woodstock artists and their music, unheard of songs and photographs and also put them on this mission."

And, there's so much more that will land on the moon Thursday in a time capsule about the size of a laptop.

As excitement builds toward touchdown McPhee says, "Anytime from this point forward, if I'm a little bit down or questioning myself, I can look up there and say ‘You made it to the moon.’"

If, because of the rough surface of the south pole, there is a failure in the mission, it is set to be tried again in 90 days. The payload is said to be indestructible, but would be sent again as well.

Air and Space