NASA’s Europa Clipper Mission Offers Opportunity to Send Your Name into Deep Space
The Europa Clipper mission is offering a unique opportunity for space enthusiasts to send their names to deep space beyond Mars. The “Message in a Bottle” event, which will end at 12:59 noon on January 1, 2024, Taiwan time (23:59 on December 31, 2023, Eastern Time), allows interested parties to add their names to a microchip that will be exploring Europa, the icy moon of Jupiter, on the Europa Clipper.
With around 700,000 names already registered, NASA technicians will use electron beams to print the names onto a silicon microchip the size of a dime. The microchip will be affixed to a metal plate engraved with a poem by U.S. poet laureate Ada Limón to celebrate the mission. The poem and the names will be affixed to the outer wall of the spacecraft like a message in a bottle.
The Europa Clipper, which is set to launch in October 2024 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, will record a flight path of 800 million kilometers to confirm whether there is a place to support life on Europa’s icy surface. The mission’s scientific goals include determining the thickness of the ice shell, studying ocean interactions below the surface, and identifying geological features. Scientists hope that the detailed exploration of Europa will help understand the potential for habitable worlds beyond Earth.
The “Message in a Bottle” event draws on NASA’s tradition of carrying inspiring messages on spacecraft exploring the solar system and beyond. Participants can download images of their names in bottles from the website and share them on social media.
This unique opportunity is a chance for space enthusiasts to become a part of deep space exploration and leave their mark beyond Earth. (This article is reprinted with permission from the Taipei Planetarium; first image source: NASA)