PRESERVE 50/250 is a historical scientific and artistic initiative marking the 250th anniversary of the United States.

The project’s mission is to continue the story of America by preserving its natural and symbolic past through a lunar seed bank.

The project will collect seeds from each U.S. state’s official tree and encase them in a preservation vessel.

In collaboration with NASA, Astrolab, Astrobotic, Artists for Humanity, and The Nation Arboretum, the vessel will be transported to the Moon aboard Astrolab’s FLIP (Flex Lunar Innovation Platform) rover, scheduled to land in June of 2026 at the Nobile region near the Moon’s south pole.

The seeds and their DNA will remain preserved on the moon for millions of years.

Accompanying the seeds, a NanoFiche archival plate will store the trees’ DNA sequences. Alongside the tree DNA will be imagery and text from TOWARDS, an ongoing project with Michael Murphy, that tells the story of humans moving toward each other and their vision of a world they want to inhabit.

These individual stories are especially relevant as humans begin to live beyond our home planet.