— A Belgian sculptor credited with the “Fallen Astronaut” figurine left on the floor of the moon in 1971 has now fallen himself.
Artist Paul Van Hoeydonck died on Saturday (Might 3) at his dwelling in Wijnegem, Antwerp in Belgium in accordance with a press release launched by his household. He was 99.
“Paul went dwelling peacefully this afternoon,” learn the notice on his Fb web page.
On Aug. 2, 1971, as NASA’s Apollo 15 astronauts wrapped up their third of three excursions out onto the lunar floor, the mission’s commander David Scott positioned a small aluminum determine and its accompanying plaque close to the place he had parked their lunar rover for the final time. Though Scott didn’t make point out of it whereas he was on the moon, he revealed the “Fallen Astronaut” statuette as soon as he and his crewmates, Jim Irwin and Al Worden, have been again on Earth.
“We left a small memorial on the moon about 20 toes north of [the lunar rover] in a small, delicate crater,” mentioned Scott. “There is a easy plaque with 14 names and people are the names, in alphabetical order, of the entire astronauts and cosmonauts who’ve died within the pursuit of the exploration of area.”
“Close to it, is a small determine representing a fallen astronaut,” he added.
Three years earlier, Van Hoeydonck got here up with the concept of the mini monument to have fun “humanity rising into area.” After making changes to the sculpture to fulfill NASA necessities and its objective being recast as a tribute to the area explorers who made the last word sacrifice, Van Hoeydonck met with the Apollo 15 astronauts handy over his creation a month earlier than their launch.
“I did not suppose it could ever occur. In fact I used to be focused on all this, however being an artist, who would have thought it doable of getting one in all my statuettes placed on the moon?” mentioned van Hoeydonck in a 2015 interview with the British Interplanetary Society’s Spaceflight journal.
Complying with NASA’s requirement that the statue not be commercialized, Scott didn’t disclose the title of the artist. It was not till a duplicate of the “Fallen Astronaut” was requested and placed on show on the Smithsonian’s Nationwide Air and Area Museum in Washington, D.C. did Van Hoeydonck’s position within the tribute first turn into public.
Van Hoeydonck’s plans to promote replicas of his statuette have been deferred after Scott and NASA expressed issues over the exploitation of the memorial. (Van Hoeydonck, in partnership with the Breckner Gallery in Düsseldorf, Germany, recreated the artist’s unique 1969 concept for statue and marketed a restricted run of 1,971 signed and numbered items in 2019.)
In 2021, Scott rebuked Van Hoeydonck’s involvement, writing in a memorandum that the “Fallen Astronaut” figurine that he left on the moon had been “fabricated by NASA personnel.” He mentioned that the design “was primarily based on customary ‘stick-figures’ that had been universally accepted within the late 1960’s as location symbols for bogs.”
Scott wrote that earlier than the mission there was “completely no contact or data exterior these restricted NASA personnel concerning this venture.”
Whether or not of not Van Hoeydonck is correctly credited with the “Fallen Astronaut” on the moon, his different area sculptures have been exhibited in Milan, Tokyo and on the Guggenheim in New York Metropolis. He was additionally the main target of the 2020 documentary “The Fallen Astronaut,” about “a sculpture that died on it is solution to the moon.”
Born on Oct. 8, 1925 in Antwerp, Belgium, Van Hoeydonck studied on the Institute of Artwork Historical past in his dwelling city and on the Institute of Artwork Historical past and Archaeology in Brussels.
