It was commissioned and placed on the Moon by the crew of Apollo 15 at Hadley Rille on August 2, 1971, UTC, next to a plaque listing 14 names of those who had died up to that time.

Before his Apollo 15 lunar mission, astronaut David Scott met Belgian painter and printmaker Paul Van Hoeydonck at a dinner party.

[1] Van Hoeydonck gives a different account of the agreement: according to an interview in the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, the statue was supposed to represent all mankind, not only fallen astronauts or cosmonauts.

Also missing was Robert Henry Lawrence Jr., the first black astronaut and a U.S. Air Force officer selected for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program who was killed in a training accident in 1967.

[7] During their press conference, the crew disclosed the statuette's existence and the National Air and Space Museum requested that a replica be made for public display.

They gave the replica to the Smithsonian Institution on April 17, 1972, the day after CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite referred to the Fallen Astronaut and plaque as the first art installation on the Moon during the broadcast of the Apollo 16 launch.

He believed this would violate the spirit of their agreement and of NASA's policy against commercial exploitation of the space program, and he tried to persuade Van Hoeydonck to refrain.

Using a box numbered 200/950 and prepared for the limited edition, a sample figure was sold to a Morgan Stanley investment banker who collected space artifacts and works of art.