Hackney designers ‘recreate’ the moon with a little help from NASA

Over the moon: Oscar Lhermitte (centre) and designers from Kudu with their lunar globes

Wanting the Moon may not be an unreasonable ambition afterall.

That is because a group of designers from Hackney has produced the world’s first exact replica of the Moon – only 20 million times smaller than the real thing.

Designer Oscar Lhermitte and Kudu studio have created lunar globes using data from Nasa, allowing them to replicate all of the Moon’s craters, bumps and ridges in 3D.

Lhermitte, a Hackney-based designer from France, has long held an interest in science and astronomy.

“To me it is a combination of the unknown, mixed with accuracy and correctness,” he says.

“The Moon is special to me as it is the first astral body that you can very easily observe, every night.”

The lunar globe project took four years to complete, and started when Lhermitte “stumbled” upon some of the latest NASA images from the Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter mission.

“They were high resolution pictures of the Moon,” he recalls. “ I wondered, is there enough data available to recreate it in 3D? Once I dived into the project, I became more and more obsessed at making the best lunar globe possible.”

Surface beauty: Moons accurately map all of the Moon’s craters

The complex design process saw Lhermitte print a moon in 3D. He then made a mould from the print out which could then be cast in polyurethane resin.

“Mould making is a craft by itself and there is so much to learn before being able to make a good cast. So I took a job with specialist mould makers to learn that craft,”  Lhermitte says.

Shoreditch-based design studio Kudu then built a computer with the same memory as those used for the 1969 Moon landings, and used it to control a ring of revolving LED lights around the globe.

“At any given time, both the real Moon and the globe are lit the same way,” Lhermitte says.

Lhermitte and Kudu are on a mission to fund the production of the first batch of 50 moons, and have launched a kickstarter to achieve their goal.