SpaceX will launch a satellite to the Moon next year funded entirely with the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, Canadian company Geometric Energy Corporation, which will lead the lunar mission, announced Sunday. The satellite, dubbed DOGE-1, will be launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in the first quarter of 2022.
The “DOGE-1 Mission to the Moon” will be “the first-ever commercial lunar payload in history paid entirely with” Dogecoin, without specifying how much the project cost. This mission will demonstrate the application of cryptocurrency beyond Earth orbit and set the foundation for interplanetary commerce.
The announcement comes the day after SpaceX founder Elon Musk hosted the live sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL), during which he praised Dogecoin, originally created as a joke but legitimised through the eccentric tech entrepreneur’s tweets.
A big booster of cryptocurrencies, the Tesla CEO described Dogecoin in an SNL skit as “an unstoppable vehicle that’s going to take over the world.”
DOGE-1 will fly a 40 kilogram cube satellite as a payload on a Falcon 9 rocket, with Geometric Energy Corporation saying its payload “will obtain lunar-spatial intelligence from sensors and cameras on-board with integrated communications and computational systems.”
For SpaceX, the announcement also comes on the day the company set a new record for its Falcon 9 series of rockets. After launching another batch of Starlink satellites into orbit, SpaceX landed the Falcon 9 rocket’s booster for a 10th time — a benchmark Musk has previously described as key in the company’s progress of reusing its rockets.
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