Rhi-Entry

In 2021, Rhiannon Adam was selected for the dearMoon mission, the first civilian spaceflight to deep space. In 2024, it was abruptly cancelled by its billionaire funder. The work blurs fact and fiction, reflecting on Adam’s psychological re-entry.

Throughout history, 117 billion humans have gazed at the same moon, yet only 24 people – all American men – have seen its surface up close. 

In 2018, Japanese billionaire and art collector Yusaku Maezawa had announced a global search for eight artists to join him on a week-long lunar mission aboard SpaceX’s developmental rocket, Starship (designed ultimately to transport humanity to Mars). This mission would be named dearMoon, and would be the first civilian mission to deep space. In 2021, during the pandemic, while all of her projects were grounded, Rhiannon Adam discovered an application for dearMoon. It was the ultimate art residency and seemed to answer her existential crisis over being a working photographer in a deeply uncertain future. If you can't travel the planet, leave it.

The mission's flight path would echo Apollo 8’s 1968 journey, which famously led astronaut Bill Anders to suggest NASA “should have sent poets” to capture the sense of wonder he experienced. dearMoon sought to fulfil this vision by inviting creatives to reflect on humanity from space, aiming to inspire world peace. 

In 2021, Adam was chosen as the only female crew member from a million applicants, with the chance to achieve the seemingly impossible – to become the first out queer woman to venture beyond the Kármán line. For three years, she immersed herself in the space industry, grappling with her mortality and the responsibility of representing marginalized voices. 

 However, in June 2024, Maezawa abruptly canceled the mission, leaving the crew to pick up the pieces of their disrupted lives. For some of the crew, this loss has had catastrophic consequences – both psychologically and financially.

The work presented here blurs fact and fiction through images, archive, and ephemera, reflecting on Adam’s psychological recalibration and her struggle to return to a "normal" life. It is often cited that reentry (or "Rhi-entry") is the most dangerous part of spaceflight, and for Adam, this rings true, despite never having left our planet.  

This project stands as a shrine to lost dreams. Space is our collective future, what happens there affects us all. While it may seem beyond the bounds of reality, Adam has brushed with that future in her present, and wishes to raise an urgent call for alternative voices in the space industry to maintain checks and balances, and above all – empathy. We are in a new kind of space race, and as with any form of competition, there is always a risk of losing sight of the world beyond the finish line.