Europa Clipper: Send your name into space on NASA’s next mission!

In October 2024, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to launch the Europa Clipper mission, We aim to investigate Jupiter’s moon Europa. In fact, the space agency is running a campaign that will allow astronomy enthusiasts to send a ‘message in a bottle’ directly into space.

Message in a Bottle campaign offers ordinary people the opportunity to submit their name on a silicon microchip It will be sent into space after the launch of the Europa Clipper mission. The microchip will travel approximately 2.6 billion kilometers to reach Jupiter’s icy moon, far beyond Mars, where the orbiter will examine more of the frozen ocean on Europa’s surface.

Those who want to participate in the campaign will be able to register their names until December 31, 2023; By the second week of November, nearly 700,000 people had already registered names. Each name will be recorded on a microchip at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory — The microchip is very small, about the size of a 10-cent coin.

“It’s not every day that the public has the opportunity to lend their names to deep space, beyond Mars, to Jupiter and its moon Europa. But with NASA’s Europa Clipper, you have that opportunity: Names will travel on the spacecraft as it journeys 1.6 billion miles (2.6 billion kilometers) toward this icy moon where an ocean hides beneath a frozen outer shell,” NASA said in a statement. ‘s publication.

Your name in space

Technicians from the Micro Devices Laboratory at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will use an electron beam to record names on a small silicon microchip, the US agency announced. For this reason, Each line of text will be written at approximately 75 nanometers, or about 1/1000 the width of a strand of hair.

The microchip will be inserted into a metal plate containing an engraving of the poem ‘Ode to Misery’ by American poet Ada Límon.. The plate will be placed outside the orbiter, which will make 50 flybys over Jupiter’s moon; a journey that must last approximately 800 million kilometers. Users can also download an illustration of their name on a bottle when registering their name.

“[A campanha] ‘Message in a Bottle’ builds on NASA’s long tradition of sending inspiring messages to spacecraft exploring our solar system and beyond. “The program aims to spark the imagination of people around the world by sending back a time capsule of sounds and images reflecting the diversity of life on Earth, just as the Voyager spacecraft did in 1977,” adds NASA.

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