High above us, on the dusty surface of the moon, a microscopic illuminated text blesses the heavens.

NASA summarized the strange afterthought like this: “A small disc carrying statements by Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon and messages of goodwill from leaders of 73 countries around the world will be left on the Moon by the Apollo 11 astronauts.”

NASA never intended to deliver such a message to the surface of the moon, but on a whim, with one month and counting ‘til lift-off, just weeks before the first lunar landing in history, NASA’s head administrator, Dr. Thomas Paine, concocted a scheme to collect messages of goodwill from world leaders to send skyward with the first astronauts, come what may.

But first they’d need to invent the delivery method. NASA contracted the job to a Massachusetts firm, Sprague Electric Company. They created a silicon disc the size of a quarter, believing it would withstand the extreme temperature swings on the moon—from 250˚F to -280˚F.

As the production began, the government hustled to reach as many world leaders as possible (116 in all), and as each of the total 73 messages arrived, Sprague Electric technicians photographed and shrunk the text so it could be read through the lens of a microscope, then etched it onto the surface of the disc via a method of ultraviolet exposure. Each message was “much smaller than the head of a pin and appears on the disc as a barely visible dot.” At t-minus five days, the wafer landed on the desk of NASA officials.

The American lunar program had been motivated by the USSR’s earlier firsts: first man in space, first satellite in orbit. JFK had framed the mission in wins and losses, asking, “How can we beat these guys?”—and we contemporary Americans continue to view the space race of the 1960s and ‘70s as an appendage of Cold War aggression. Certainly, it was those things; one of the many soviet lunar satellites, Luna 15, orbited the moon two days before the Americans arrived.

Yet this small silicon disc contradicts that single narrative of our journey into outer space as only a race to win. In 30 pages of messages (when printed in legible 12-point font), one word repeated as if the central lyric of a single song: peace, peace, peace. In handwriting, type, and translated from native languages, international leaders congratulated NASA and the country who funded its accomplishment:

“From the President of Israel in Jerusalem [Zalman Shazar,] with hope for ‘abundance of peace so long as the Moon endureth’ (Psalms 72:7).”

From President Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal: “This is a message from black militants. It is a message of human solidarity, a message of peace. In this first Visit to the Moon, rather than a victory of technology we salute a victory of human will: research and progress, but also, brotherhood.”

From Prime Minister Pierre Elliott-Trudeau of Canada: “Man has reached out and touched the tranquil moon. May that high accomplishment allow man to rediscover the Earth and find peace.”

From President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast: “I would hope that when this passenger from the sky leaves man’s imprint on lunar soil, he…would turn towards our planet Earth and cry out how insignificant the problems which torture men are, when viewed from up there.”

From the unnamed President of Mexico: “In 1492, the discovery of the American Continent transformed geography and the course of human events. Today, conquest of ultraterrestrial space—with its attendant unknowns—recreates our perspectives and enhances our paradigms.” With that, space exploration brings “a new far-reaching responsibility” with it.

But most moving to me was Pope Paul VI’s message from the Vatican: an illuminated text of Psalm 8 in written in Latin which translated, says,

“Jahweh our Lord, how great your name throughout the earth, above the heavens is your majesty chanted…I look up at your heavens, made by your fingers, at the moon and stars you set in place. Or the son of man that you should care for him? Ah, what is man that you should spare a thought for him? …Jahweh our Lord, how great your name throughout the earth!”

Reading the ancient words of Psalm 8, pressed to paper in gold script upon a disc buried in lunar soil 238,900 miles above me, I could almost see the Pope in Rome, hands raised, with an eye toward blessing the planet which birthed him. I could almost hear the words echoing across the canyons of the moon’s surface and across the universe. I could almost imagine the words as a song belted to stars, a celestial arrangement to praise the grandeur of God and everything he ever fashioned.

Even as my nation, with its embroiled, complicated politics took a step that would shift our planet, words of blessing that transcended national borders rocketed skyward alongside, the disc rattling in a case the size of a make-up compact in the pocket of Buzz Aldrin’s sleeve.

The day of the goodwill disc’s delivery, July 20, 1969, went like this: three days had passed since lift off at Kennedy Space Center in which the three astronauts had shot through outer space toward the moon, where they finally entered its orbit. Two of those American spacewalkers, “Buzz” Aldrin and Neil Armstrong, exited the main craft, entering the lunar module nicknamed “the eagle.” For two hours, the eagle descended. But fuel supplies ran low and then the module’s auto-pilot malfunctioned. The landing, for a moment, seemed impossible, yet Armstrong maneuvered to the pockmarked surface. “The Eagle has landed,” he said. (In response, mission control informed him that “you got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again.”)

For two and a half hours, the astronauts walked lightly on the luminous ground, the first explorers on a new world. They bent to take photographs. They scooped up rocks and soil to bring back to eager researchers. They mapped the surface. They calibrated machines to be left on the surface for ongoing experimentation: a seismograph to record and analyze “moonquakes” and a laser that would measure the exact distance between our home and its lunar body.

At Houston’s command, the astronauts returned to the module. Aldrin ascended the ladder first, hand over hand, toward the Eagle, and Armstrong followed. Half-way up the rungs, Armstrong interrupted the climb. “How about the package out of your sleeve? Get that?” he asked.

“No, want it now?” Aldrin said.

“Guess so,” Armstrong said. Aldrin paused and dropped the goodwill disc from his sleeve pocket, then climbed down a few rungs to nudge it with his boot, to settle it more firmly into the lunar terrain, the Sea of Tranquility. There it will stay for the next thousand years, hundreds of thousands of miles from our spinning planet, to which the astronauts returned, triumphant.

Before getting carried away, I should point out the bald fact that the Soviet Union contributed no message of peace to the disc (nor were they invited to the party). However, the U.S. did solicit messages from the Baltic states Estonia and Latvia—states that had been annexed by the USSR, states that the U.S. stubbornly sought to recognize as sovereign entities despite the enemy’s military campaigns to withhold their freedoms. In that sense, the goodwill disc acted as a middle finger to the American rivals.

Yet the mission of humankind into space did lead to peace between the Cold War powers, almost despite themselves. In 1975, six years after the moon landing, a cosmonaut and astronaut shared a historic handshake while hovering in orbit a few miles above West Germany, signifying the start of interspatial cooperation. After that, the U.S. and former Soviet Union shared a mission in the MIR-Shuttle program (and all the astronauts made it back to earth alive).

To this day, the International Space Station continues to host a collection of nations—the U.S., Russia, Japan, the EU, and Canada—that have collaborated to advance humanity’s knowledge of the ever-expanding galaxy, which is fitting. After all, how could humankind ever explore the whole of it without cooperation? As NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly has said of his time on serving on the ISS, “We have to [cooperate] because we rely on each other for our lives.”

Yet 50-plus years from the lunar landing, the messages of the goodwill disc have become increasingly relevant amid fears of satellite warfare, orbiting space junk, climate change, and aggression between former cold-warrior states—all amid a race between a select and wealthy few to make the leap to Mars.

When I think long about these mysteries of humankind, I find myself offering up the very same prayers uttered by the Pope back in 1959. I consider the release of a missile, the heating of the planet, an asteroid crashing onto our shores, the wholesale destruction of my home and yours, and I realize just how small I am. The stars easily outlast my futile flesh. So I turn to the stars and send my own glittering thoughts skyward and hope that God will think of us, down here in the orb spun by His fingers, and make the peace we cannot.