Steve Aoki to be part of the first civilian mission to the Moon
DJ Steve Aoki is heading to the Moon. The Californian, who was crowned the highest-grossing electronic musician of all time by Pollstar in 2012, is to be a crew member of the first-ever civilian space mission to the Moon.
The week-long journey will commence next year, with a crew of eight flying to their destination on a rocket produced by controversial businessman Elon Musk‘s SpaceX.
The mission comes as part of the dearMoon Project, a lunar tourism and art scheme financed by the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa. Per Mixmag, he purchased the seats in the rocket back in 2018 with the intended purpose of providing them to “as many talented individuals as possible”.
“Since I was a little child I was dreaming of going to the Moon. It’s becoming more and more real every day,” Aoki said of his reasons for committing to the project. “Still hard to believe but very excited and grateful for this amazing once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. To the Moon!”
The dearMoon project had over a million applicants. However, the final lineup for the crew is K-pop star T.O.P., filmmaker Brendan Hall, YouTuber Tim Dodd, photographer Karim Illiya, actor Dev Joshi, artist Yemi AD, and photographer Rhiannon Adam. Reflecting on the mission, Maezawa said he was “very thrilled” to have the group joining him.
Earlier this year, Steve Aoki collaborated with emos Taking Back Sunday on the track ‘Just Us Two’. It followed Aoki’s past works with bands such as Rise Against, Blink 182 and Fall Out Boy.
Discussing why he approached Taking back Sunday, the DJ replied: “Because I fucking love these guys and they’re awesome. You wanna do something that’s disruptive and different and I’d never heard them working with a DJ, so I’m like, ‘Oh, that would be really cool’. The fact that they’re willing to work with me was really an honour too – it’s nice to work with other artists that have the same kind of proactive, optimistic view on what we’re going to be doing.”
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