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NASA Sending Message in a Bottle to One of Jupiter's Moons, Your Name Can Go With

Europa Clipper to carry with it to Jupiter a poem and human names 7 photos
Photo: NASA
Europa Clipper's high-gain antennaEuropa Clipper's propulsion moduleEuropa Clipper's propulsion tanksThe Mapping Imaging Spectrometer for Europa (MISE) Science InstrumentEuropa Clipper's propulsion moduleThe ultraviolet spectrograph
Come October 2024, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch into space and on to Jupiter's moon Europa a piece of hardware called the Europa Clipper. Put together and managed by Caltech, JPL, and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the mission is meant to "determine whether there are places below the surface of Europa that could support life."

It's the first human mission to be sent so far out into space with such a definite goal in mind. It all relies on a spacecraft that'll go around the icy moon 50 times. In doing so, it will try and snatch samples of gas and dust from above the celestial body's surface. Radars, magnetometers and a series of sensors are on deck, and will try to give us a better sense of what's up there.

We'll get into the specifics of the mission and the spacecraft in a more detailed story on the Europa Clipper shortly, but this piece is not about either of them, but about one of the items the ship will be carrying with it to a distance of billions of miles from Earth.

That certain item is defined as a sort of message in a bottle by NASA. It is in a campaign named exactly that, Message in a Bottle, aimed at making the mission popular among the general public. As it has done before, most recently with the Perseverance rover sent to Mars, NASA is taking along for the ride the names of whoever wants to be a part of the mission.

The centerpiece of the idea is a poem written by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limon. Titled "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa," the seven-strophe work of poetry is not some message to potential aliens living on Europa, but a sort of praise for humanity's curious nature.

Every human being on this planet with an interest in such things can have their name sent to the stars. NASA allows everyone to add their name to the poem, all of which will be stenciled onto a microchip which will be attached to the Europa Clipper.

The campaign is open until December 31, 2023, more than enough time for the number of names submitted to be much larger than in the case of Perseverance – that one shipped no less than 11 million human names to the Red Planet.

On top of having their names sent to the stars once more, people involved in this will receive an "illustration of your name on a message in a bottle against a rendering of Europa and Jupiter." A social media hashtag, #SendYourName, has also been created to get people talking.

As per NASA, the Europa Clipper spacecraft is in the process of being put together at JPL. After its launch next year, it will take it until 2030 to reach its destination, after traveling 1.8 billion miles (2.6 billion km).
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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