In January, the World Monuments Fund announced its 2025 Watch list of heritage sites facing major challenges – and this year’s 25 locations span five continents and, for the first time, includes the moon. The lunar surface is home to many artifacts from both robotic and human exploration, such as the Apollo 11 lunar landing in the Sea of Tranquility with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s powdery footprints preserved on surface since 1969.
The moon’s placement on the World Monuments Watch is an important milestone for New Mexico State University anthropology professor emerita Beth O’Leary, who began a journey 25 years ago to find ways to preserve significant artifacts and sites on the moon.
“Cultural resources on the moon so far have been preserved by their remoteness, but are vulnerable to damage and destruction from increasing space activities, both national and commercial," O’Leary added. “The World monument Watch calls for global cooperation to preserve the moon’s cultural and scientific legacy.”
The lunar landing site, known as Tranquility Base, preserves some 106 assorted artifacts related to the event, including the landing module.
“It’s the first time the World Monuments Fund has recognized another celestial body,” said O’Leary. “We were very excited that they chose our nomination to place the moon on its 2025 Watch as part of the process for placing lunar preservation into an international framework.”
The idea to protect the moon originated from one of O’Leary’s graduate students with a grant from the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium at NMSU. It evolved over the years with subsequent groups of students working on nominations to protect the artifacts. In 2010, one group of students went with O’Leary to Santa Fe and succeeded in having the artifacts at Apollo 11’s Tranquility Base added to New Mexico’s State Register of Cultural Properties. Other states followed.
In the meantime, O’Leary served on national committees and co-wrote and co-edited books to promote preservation of moon artifacts: “The Final Mission: Preserving NASA’s Apollo Sites” and “Archaeology and Heritage of the Human Movement into Space.”
O’Leary is a member of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), a non-governmental group dedicated to the conservation of the world’s monuments and sites. She is also on the International Scientific Committee on Aerospace Heritage of ICOMOS, which wrote the nomination.
The 2025 heritage sites were selected from more than 200 nominations that underwent extensive internal and external review before final selection by an independent panel of international heritage experts. The selection on the 2025 World Monuments Watch is a giant step that advocates for international agreements and protections for lunar heritage sites.
“For the first time, the moon is included on the Watch to reflect the urgent need to recognize and preserve the artifacts that testify to humanity’s first steps beyond Earth – a defining moment in our shared history,” World Monuments Fund's president and chief executive officer, Bénédicte de Montlaur, said in a statement.
Items such as the TV camera that broadcast to Earth the first humans footprints on the barren lunar landscape made by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin; a memorial disc with global goodwill messages left by the Apollo 11 astronauts; and hundreds of other objects are part of the lunar legacy.
O’Leary argues that legacy belongs to all humanity, from the first robotic spacecraft, Luna 2, put there by the former Soviet Union in 1959, to the first moonwalk by two American astronauts at Tranquility Base in 1969, to recent forays by several nations to the south polar regions of the moon.
The Antarctic Treaty system of consensual approval for protecting sites, created during the Cold War, demonstrates that nations can act together to protect remote places similar to the lunar surface.
“We want the lunar sites to come under international protections,” O’Leary said, “The next step is to create agreements, treaties, essentially protocols and procedures that other nations that are on the moon, or will be going to the moon, can agree on so that we can protect humanity’s heritage.”
O’Leary said the Apollo moonwalkers are part of the movement that started with our ancestors out of Africa more than 300,000 years ago and continues through our exploration of the solar system.
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CUTLINE: Left: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin at Tranquility Base on the moon. (NASA photo) Right: Beth O’Leary's graduate seminar in Cultural Resource Management students who traveled to Santa Fe in 2010 to present a case for Apollo 11 moon artifacts to be listed on the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties. They were successful and went on to get the Apollo artifacts listed on other states’ historic registers. Pictured are Matt Punke, Bob Debry, Beth O’Leary, Jaime Vela, Deneve Sam, Sahrah Bliss and Reagyn Slocum. (Courtesy photo)
CUTLINE: Beth O’Leary's graduate seminar in Cultural Resource Management students traveled to Santa Fe in 2010 to present a case for Apollo 11 moon artifacts to be listed on the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties. They were successful and went on to get the Apollo artifacts listed on other states’ historic registers. Pictured are Matt Punke, Bob Debry, Beth O’Leary, Jaime Vela, Deneve Sam, Sahrah Bliss and Reagyn Slocum. (Courtesy photo)
CUTLINE: Beth O’Leary co-authored and co-edited two books promoting preservation of moon artifacts and sites: “The Final Mission: Preserving NASA’s Apollo Sites” and “Archaeology and Heritage of the Human Movement into Space.” (Courtesy photos)
CUTLINE: NASA photo of Apollo 11 retroreflector and descent stage along with footprints of astronauts on the lunar surface. The retroreflector is a device consisting of a series of mirrors designed to reflect laser beams sent from Earth back to their source, allowing scientists to precisely measure the distance between the Earth and the moon; while the descent stage refers to the lower part of the lunar module which remained on the moon after the astronauts ascended back to lunar orbit, essentially acting as a launch pad for the ascent stage. (NASA photo)