My art goes into space... It’s Launch Day!!

The Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-134) will launch at 1:56pm BST today, the 16 May 2011, carrying with her a digital copy of one of my meteorite photograms + a photo of me with my artwork.

Part of the "Fluxface in Space" exhibition, a commemorative project celebrating the Space Shuttle program as it is coming to an end with the launch of Atlantis. The exhibition is to be launched into orbit on the last Endeavour Space Shuttle mission, this final mission will include a rendezvous with the International Space Station.

The participating artists (from 26 nations) each created an original postcard sized work of art, in various media, interpreting the themes of Space Exploration & the Arts, the Shuttle Program, Outer Space and Astronomy. 

The organisers are heralding this as an historic exhibition, as apparently this is the first international group art exhibition in space.

The exhibit is expected to travel around the surface of the world as well, while the digitised versions are touring space on board the Space Shuttle, the actual artworks will be exhibited in a touring exhibition here on earth. In October 2010 the touring show kicked off at the Kennedy Space Station in Florida where the Launch will occur, after that it's next stop was at the Fort Worth Art Center in Texas, then it went to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, it will continue to tour the world and is expected to be seen by many thousands in art centers, museums and other art gallery environments. 

It is to be Endeavour's 25th and final mission. After returning to earth in 16 days time she will be retired to a Los Angeles museum. Endeavour will be carrying her most expensive payload ever - a $2billion particle physics experiment known as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) designed to probe the unknown reaches of space and help us understand the secrets of the universe. 

It will test the long-standing Big Bang theory - by checking for any large quantities of anti-matter - which theorists suspect was created when the universe was born, and will also be used to examine the nature of dark matter, the material that makes up most of the universe.