Countless poems and songs have been devoted to its cool light in the dark of night. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata touches us deeply in the soul through its compositional perfection; Debussy’s Clair de Lune lifts us up into floating states of bliss. Jules Verne´s science fiction novel “From the Earth to the Moon” described the journey to our satellite a full century before Neil Armstrong’s first step on the Moon—astonishingly precise and visionary at the same time. In 1902, pioneer Georges Méliès ventured a cinematic adaptation of this material, creating a milestone in film history, to which Martin Scorsese paid a loving tribute a hundred years later with his film Hugo Cabret . Pink Floyd devoted an entire album to The Dark Side of the Moon, and Bob Dylan, in his epic love song Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, let the moonlight swim in the eyes of the celebrated beauty.
Still from “A Trip to the Moon”, directed by Georges Méliès (1902)
Seen up close, however, the Moon loses its romantic aura. Viewed through a powerful telescope, it reveals a gray, dusty surface covered with craters. Thus, the term “moonscape” became synonymous with inhospitable, desolate regions. Yet the Moon’s influence on Earth is immense: its gravity stabilizes Earth’s axis, causes the tides, affects the biorhythms of certain plants and animals—and presumably even the female fertility cycle. For our ancestors, the Moon was also a celestial body of great spiritual significance.
John F. Kennedy’s announcement to send a human to the Moon within the decade of the 1960s was an expression of the systemic rivalry of that era—but also a testament to pioneering spirit and visionary ambition. On July 20, 1969, this seemingly impossible feat became reality: Neil Armstrong set foot on the surface of the Moon as the first human being.
Screenshot from the Spark about Space Colonies in the OUBEY MINDSPACE
The exploration of space and human spaceflight had fascinated both OUBEY and me from an early age—independently of one another, long before we met. After we got to know each other, we felt closely connected, not least because we shared a keen interest in the cosmos, its phenomena, mysteries, and history. We celebrated special missions such as the journey of the two Voyager probes Voyager program – Wikipedia into interstellar space or the – initially rather bumpy – launch of the Hubble Space Telescope A friend in space – OUBEY MINDKISS. We were deeply moved by the statement of many astronaut who had been to space and summarized their most important insight from this experience as follows: We went out as technicians, we returned as conscious human beings.
What Aristotle had already recognized in the 4th century BCE, and what Magellan practically proved with his circumnavigation of the globe in the 16th century, received its final visual confirmation through images of the Earth floating freely in dark space—of a beauty that is hard to surpass. Not growing accustomed to this sight, but encountering it again and again with reverence and awe, evokes a humility in thinking about the interconnectedness of existence that hardly anything else can achieve.
When our Earth was still young, about 4.5 billion years ago, it was shaken by a massive collision with a Mars-sized protoplanet. Debris of rock, dust, and molten material was hurled into space, gathered in orbit, and eventually formed the Moon through gravity. This is why the lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo missions so closely resemble those of Earth. Beyond all romance, there is indeed a kind of kinship between Earth and Moon, which has been orbiting it at a distance of around 380,000 kilometers for billions of years—rendering valuable service along the way.
Screenshot from the Spark about Space Exploration in the OUBEY MINDSPACE
Artemis II is scheduled to launch in a few weeks. For the first time in more than fifty years, a crew will once again travel into orbit around the Moon—still without a landing, but in preparation for Artemis III. The mission follows a so-called free-return trajectory. This special flight geometry makes it possible to use the Moon’s gravity as a natural return ticket: even in the event of a complete failure of the main engine, the capsule would return safely to Earth without additional fuel. The laws of physics serve here as the ultimate backup propulsion system.
Public interest today is not comparable to the hype surrounding Apollo 11 at the time. This could change, however, if Artemis III marks the first time since 1972 that humans set foot on the Moon again. And probably even more so when construction begins on the planned base camp, from which the first two-year Mars expedition could launch in as little as 20 years, or even sooner. Since the moon has no atmosphere, no air resistance, and no gravity, the launch conditions here are much more favorable than on Earth. By then, there will also be flowing water on the moon, which is currently still bound in the ice of the Shackleton crater but can be thawed.
As back then, the purpose of such missions is also being questioned today—not least because of the enormous costs. Yet it has never been spaceflight that prevented us from doing our earthly homework or from taking responsibility for ecological balance and peaceful coexistence.
OUBEY had a clear stance on this. What for some was an irreconcilable contradiction belonged inseparably together for him—in his very own vision of the future of humanity and the Earth. Some of his thoughts on this can be heard in the OUBEY MINDSPACE. Jules Verne would probably have taken great delight in it. 🌙
OUBEYs statements can be found in these two rooms at the MINDSPACE:
- On space exploration: https://mindspace.oubey.com/cosmos
- On space colonization: https://mindspace.oubey.com/moebius
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There are six rooms in OUBEY MINDSPACE. Each of them contains five different Mind Sparks, which in turn contain various impulses. Behind every Spark and every impulse is a story about OUBEY and what interested and inspired him. I will tell these stories here.
At this point, I would like to thank the Kubikfoto³ team for the great design of OUBEY MINDSPACE, which has already won three prestigious international design awards – most recently the Red Dot Award 2025.
How great sympathy on Earth for this device is now is shown by the fact that its “round” birthdays are properly celebrated – its thirtieth one almost exactly one year ago. It’s also evident from the fact that –unlike the LHC at CERN in Geneva for instance – the billions it has cost to build, equip, run and occasionally update have never been seriously criticised. This is highly unusual.
It wasn’t always so from day one. After all, the telescope still hadn’t shown what it could really do. The initial criticism became really vociferous shortly after Hubble’s start in April 1990 when the first images it sent to Earth turned out to be blurred and thus unusable. Even terrestrial telescopes could produce better pictures. Criticism of the costs was reinforced by ridicule and scorn. It could well have meant Hubble’s early demise.
But it didn’t. Everybody deserves a second chance carried the day. And Hubble got one. After all, it was human error in the manufacturing of the mirror, undetected before the launch, that was responsible for the poor quality of the images. It had been ground incorrectly. To prevent Project Hubble from becoming a grandiose billion dollar flop before it even got started, a servicing mission was sent into space in 1993. Two astronauts with great courage corrected the error 550 kilometres above the Earth’s atmosphere. And the telescope immediately started streaming breath-taking pictures of star clusters, gas nebulae and galaxies as well as images of objects in our solar system. Asked about its high cost, Hubble veteran Mario Livio once replied: „Well, it’s given us the universe – it’s cheap at the price.” This is how Hubble became our eye in space.
This eye made visible to us what had long been mathematically calculated but what up till that point had been abstract and unimaginable. The incredible beauty of the universe is revealed to us in individual fantastic formations like the “Eagle Nebulae”, the “Three Pillars of Creation” or in the fascinating forms of diverse galaxies – from spiral galaxies to sombrero galaxies. This moves us and inspires us. Human feelings are not triggered by mathematical formula or equations but by sensory perceptions and experiences. Hubble provided us with picture experiences like no other and still continues to do so. Pictures that trigger feelings of happiness, amazement, astonishment and also awe in us. We are simply enthralled by what we see and can’t get enough of it. This is probably one, if not the most important, reason for the love that so many people feel for this flying “tin can”, the size of a school bus.
Beyond the images that practically everyone on the earth is now familiar with, Hubble’s eye also gives us insights into far-flung regions of our universe like the “Ultra Deep Field”. It thus provides us with a unique photographic history book on the creation and expansion of the universe. Because “far away” in the universe always means “long ago”.
In 2009 Hubble was equipped with a completely new camera – the Wide Field Camera 3 – and can now photograph galaxies beyond visible light in the infrared of the Ultra Deep Field, galaxies that were formed shortly before the formation of our own universe some 13.7 billion years ago – just 700 million years after the so-called “Big Bang”. This is sensational. Hubble lets us look back almost to the beginnings of our universe and at the same time lets us track its expansion across over billions and millions of years. It can make you dizzy. For those who would like to see all this explained clearly, we recommend the instructive and entertaining 30 minute video Hubble´s Universe Unfiltered: Deep Universe which is ideal for beginners, provided that they can speak English.
That OUBEY back in 1984, twenty five years before the Hubble Space Telescope with its new space camera was able to look into the beginnings of our universe, had fixed this view so definitely in his mind’s eye that he was able artistically to capture what he saw in his picture Einstein’s Tears, defies belief. Yet the astronomer Dr Cecilia Scorza from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg noted just that with a mixture of astonishment and wonder when she encountered this picture in February 2010. She explained, using OUBEYs painting what can be explained to us today using the Hubble telescope’s shots from the Ultra Deep Field.
At some point, Hubble’s time will come to an end. Development of a successor is already well underway: The James Webb Telescope, an infrared telescope with a mirror diameter of 6.5 meters, will be ideal for peering into the oldest regions of the universe. Until then, Hubble will continue to orbit the Earth fifteen times a day from a great distance, providing us with ever new images and insights.
“I hope that we’ll know well in advance when and where Hubble will come down in the South Pacific. Then all of us who have worked so long with Hubble can charter a cruise ship and be present at its end. It will be sad and we’re sure to cry. But at the same time, there’ll be this joy around for all this wonderful science that Hubble has given us over the decades” says Heide Hammel, Voyager project scientist, who together with Hubble is observing the atmospheres of the gas planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptunet1. This doesn’t sound like the decommissioning of a machine. It sounds like leave-taking of a good friend.
1Quoted from the programme “Das mit den Sternen tanzt” on the DLF Kulturkanal on 9.4.2020
For more information about Hubble, please click here.