While certain celebrities, authors, and others landed back on Earth after a much talked-about trip to ‘space’ last week, one awarding-winning photographer has taken the disappointment of not going to the moon, and instead turned the experience into an award-winning photography project.
Rhiannon Adam, who grew up in Ballinadee and attended Bandon Bridge NS but now lives in America, was one of eight lucky artists out of one million applicants to be selected for the dearMoon project in 2022.
However, that mission did not go ahead but last week, Ms Adam was named the winner of the ‘Creative’ category at the Sony World Photography Awards 2025 for her piece, Rhi-Entry, based upon that experience.
In 2022, Rhiannon was to be the only female crew member to take part in the first civilian lunar orbital mission aboard SpaceX’s Starship, which was being funded by Japanese entrepreneur billionaire Yusaku Maezawa.
Speaking to The Southern Star in 2022, Rhiannon said she was ‘beyond ecstatic’ about being selected for the SpaceX civilian trip around the moon.
While there was no departure date announced at the time, she was looking forward to training for the mission as well as being an openly queer person among the team.
However, last year Yusaku Maezawa abruptly cancelled the mission, much to the disappointment of Rhiannon and her crew members.
However, as a creative artist, she turned her experience into something positive and entered her project, Rhi-Entry, into the Sony World Photography Awards and actually won first place in the creative section.
Rhiannon’s project recounts the disruption this brought to her, and all the other crew members’ lives, having spent three years immersing herself in the space industry until June of last year, when the project’s backer, Yusaku Maezawa cancelled the mission.
