Mater Piscis (2024)

Launch to Jupiter: October 14, 2024

Arrival date: 2030

Mission duration: 3.5 years

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Eduardo Kac's Mater Piscis, 2024, is a GIF animation (above), the frames of which were stenciled with an electron beam onto a dime-size silicon microchip (below). The chip was integrated into NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will be launched to investigate whether the conditions on Jupiter’s moon Europa can support life.


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Eduardo Kac's Mater Piscis, 2024, was etched on a fingernail-sized silicon chip (the green square seen above) that was attached to the spacecraft's vault plate (below). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


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Eduardo Kac's Mater Piscis, 2024, was etched on a silicon chip that was attached to the spacecraft's vault plate (the green square seen above). The photo shows the vault plate just before being installed on NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft on May 3, 2024. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


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The photo shows a technician preparing to attach the vault plate to NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft on May 3, 2024, in the clean room of High Bay 1 at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


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The photo shows a technician attaching the vault plate to NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft on May 3, 2024, in the clean room of High Bay 1 at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


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Illustration indicating the location of the vault plate. The microchip, which includes Eduardo Kac's Mater Piscis, 2024, among other data, is attached to the inward-facing side of Europa Clipper’s vault plate. Eduardo Kac's Mater Piscis, 2024, was made possible through NASA’s “Message in a Bottle” project. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech


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Europa Clipper will journey 1.8 billion miles (2.6 billion kilometers) and will arrive at Jupiter’s moon in 2030. Credit: NASA

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Europa Clipper launched on October 14, 2024, on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: NASA


Mater Piscis (2024)

Eduardo Kac

Mater Piscis is an artwork composed of four sequential frames that express the life cycle of an aquatic lifeform. Each frame uses ASCII to render an image, adhering to NASA's requirement that only typographic characters be used for this project. Mater Piscis was conceived specifically for integration into NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft, which was launched on October 14, 2024, to investigate the possibility of life-supporting conditions at Jupiter’s moon Europa.

The first image of Mater Piscis features a fish underwater, setting the context in which this micromovie unfolds. The second frame represents the fish meeting its mate, suggesting the interaction that characterizes courtship. In the third frame we see evidence of reproduction in the form of several offspring, still small and vulnerable. With the relentless drive to propagate life asserted, in the fourth frame we see the lifecycle of the protagonist come to an end beneath the water's surface.

Mater Piscis was etched with an electron beam on a dime-size silicon chip that was bonded to the spacecraft's vault plate. This plate seals an opening in the spacecraft's metal vault holding the electronics for its science instruments, protecting them from Jupiter's dangerous radiation. The microchip is attached to the inward-facing side of Europa Clipper’s vault plate. Each frame of Mater Piscis was etched at a scale smaller than 1/1000th the width of a human hair, which is approximately 75 nanometers.

As it carries out flybys of Jupiter's moon, Europa Clipper will embody "NASA's astrobiology mission of confirming the presence of a vast salty ocean beneath Jupiter’s moon Europa, and, ultimately, determining if Europa is capable of supporting life." The four frames that make up Mater Piscis constitute a GIF animation (top) specially created for this singular Jovian voyage.

In keeping with the water-themed elements that ornate the spacecraft's vault plate, and in accordance to NASA's overarching mission goal of literally searching for an extraterrestrial ocean, Mater Piscis encapsulates the poetics of terrestrial marine life and makes it travel 1.8 billion-mile (2.6 billion kilometers) for around six years, to finally reach the largest planet in the Solar System.