Fallen Astronaut is a 3. 5-inch aluminum sculpture created by Paul Van Hoeydonck. It was commissioned and placed on the Moon by the crew of Apollo 15 at Hadley Rille on August 1, 1971, next to a plaque listing the 14 men known who died.
About Fallen Astronaut in brief
Fallen Astronaut is a 3. 5-inch aluminum sculpture created by Paul Van Hoeydonck. It is a small stylized figure, meant to depict an astronaut in a spacesuit, intended to commemorate the astronauts and cosmonauts who have died in the advancement of space exploration. It was commissioned and placed on the Moon by the crew of Apollo 15 at Hadley Rille on August 1, 1971, next to a plaque listing the 14 men known who died. The crew kept the memorial’s existence a secret until after completion of their mission. After public disclosure, the National Air and Space Museum requested a replica of the statue. Controversy soon followed, as Van Hoesdenck claimed a different understanding of the agreement made with the astronauts, and attempted to sell up to 950 copies of the sculpture.
He finally relented under pressure from NASA, which had a strict policy against commercial exploitation of the US government space program. The replica was given to the Smithsonian Institution on April 17, 1972, the day after CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite referred to the Fallen Astronaut and plaque as the first art installation on the moon during the broadcast of the Apollo 16 launch. In 2009, a limited edition of the figure was sold by Waddell Gallery of New York for USD 750 each, a second edition at USD 5,000.
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This page is based on the article Fallen Astronaut published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 29, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
