The Billion Year Archive

Humanity’s Gift to the Future

The Billion Year Archive™ is an Arch Mission Foundation initiative that seeks to build a solar-system scale archive of human civilization that will last for at least billions of years.

The Billion Year Archive is the largest footprint and longest duration engineering project in human history. It is also the first practical initiative with potential to guarantee that our species and civilization will never be lost.

 The more locations that Arch Libraries that are sent to, the greater the probability that at least some of them will survive to be discovered in the distant future.

Long after the Pyramids have turned to dust, and no matter what transpires on Earth, The Billion Year Archive will remain.

The Billion Year Archive is comprised of ultra long-term storage devices called Arch™ Libraries (pronounced ”Arks”).

Arch Libraries are the most durable records of human civilization ever built. Using new technologies, they preserve more knowledge for more time, than anything ever created.

Arch Libraries are being designed in a variety of form factors to persist on Earth, as well as in other locations across our solar system and beyond.

The Billion Year Archive initiative is the primary objective of the Arch Mission’s ongoing series of missions around the solar system.

The first installment was in 2018, when the Arch Mission and SpaceX delivered Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy on a 14B year durability disc of quartz, in the glove compartment of Elon Musk’s Tesla. It is now orbiting the Sun for at least 30 million years.

The second installment was inauguration of a ring orbital archives around planet Earth, in which the Arch Mission and SpaceChain delivered the Wikipedia in low-earth orbit in October of 2018.

The installment is the Lunar Library,™ which started with a 30 million page backup of civilization, that crash-landed on the Moon with SpaceIL in April of 2019. It was followed by two subsequent Lunar missions, including a successful landing with Intuitive Machines.

The Billion Year Archive is humanity’s gift to the future, and like the Encyclopedia Galactica, it will never be completed.

There will always be more to learn, chronicle and share as our civilization extends its footprints and handprints to the stars.

We invite and need your support and contributions. Join us to preserve, connect and share the memories and heritage of our species.