Get ready for ads on the moon: Japanese company has plan

Image: Sana Mutawi

Tuesday, August 18, 2015, 10:19 AM - We suppose it had to happen some day, but it's odd to see it a reality: Advertising is coming to Earth's moon, and it's not as pricey as you'd think.

We're not talking about a giant billboard, though. It's more like product placement, and the first contract we know about, thanks to the Global Post, is a Japanese energy drink.

The Post reports Pocari Sweat (Not a typo, that's seriously what it's called) is huge in the Far East, and a can of it will be on the moon as early as next year. The odd payload will be ferried to Earth's only natural satellite aboard a SpaceX mission that plans to drop a rover on the moon's surface in late 2016.

The hope, apparently, is for a future astronaut to one day get to the can and take a good long swig of it. It was the centre of a large marketing campaign in Japan:

As for how a tin can is supposed to preserve a drink in the moon's harsh environment, Pocari gets around that by having it in powder form. Consumers then have to add water, which would an astronaut would either bring with them, or obtain it locally via mining the moon for oxygen to combine with hydrogen to make water, according to a process currently in development by NASA.

The can itself will also be specially designed to survive the trip.

As for how much this will cost, we're not quite sure, but according to the company arranging the trip, Astrobotic, it's surprisingly affordable.

We checked their online calculator, and it's possible to send a half-pound payload to the moon and drop it off via rover for around $1.7 million, with a wide range of bells and whistles.

It's one small step for an ad exec, but it'll be interesting to see how this new frontier of advertising progresses in the decades to come.

SOURCE: Global Post | Astrobotic | NASA