Message in a Bottle: How to Send Your Name to Europa with NASA’s Clipper Mission

NASA is preparing a new campaign called Message in a Bottle, in which people from all over the world can send their names to Jupiter’s moon Europa.

Missions like this have already happened and are still ongoing. In 2020, the Perseverance rover received the names of almost 11 million people to take to Mars. The Artemis I mission was also another one that joined the wave and, currently, the 2026 mission to Mars is collecting names to take to the Red Planet.

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Message in a Bottle: moon Europa

NASA’s new Message in a Bottle campaign towards the moon Europa is guided by a poem written especially for Europe by American writer Ada Limón, called “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa”.

The space agency’s proposal is to take the poem to Jupiter’s moon signed by several people from all over the world. The campaign is the result of a union between NASA, the poet and the US Library of Congress.

The poem and the names will travel 2.8 billion kilometers with the Clipper mission, which will orbit the Jupiter system (learn more about the mission below).

Check out how to get your name on the Clipper mission below:

Access the campaign link;Click in “send your name” and then “go” (at this stage, you can read the poem, if you want);Fill in your details: name, surname, email, country, state and zip code;Click on “sign on“.

After completing these steps, the site makes an art with your name available for download (see below). All names will be analyzed and NASA must communicate via email whether it was approved or not.

After submitting your name, NASA prepares small art for download (Image: reproduction/Message in a Bottle)

You can check the participation map here. At the time of writing this report, the United States had most of the names sent, exceeding 206,900.

India comes next, with 73 thousand. Brazil has just over 20 thousand shipments. In total, more than 696,400 names have been sent to NASA since the campaign began on June 1. For security reasons, NASA will not make available the final list of names that will be sent to the moon Europa.

People can submit their names until December this year. Afterwards, the approved names will be recorded on microchips, which will be mounted on the Europa Clipper spacecraft. It is worth noting that participating in the Clipper mission campaign does not entitle you to participate in other similar missions without registering again.

Names inserted into the Clipper structure

According to NASA, a tantalum metal dome plate will be attached to the Europa Clipper spacecraft and, on it, Ada Limón’s poem and the names approved by the agency will be engraved.

Image above illustrates the location of the tantalum metal dome plate (golden triangle), which will be attached to the Europa Clipper (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

What is the Europa Clipper mission

The Europa Clipper mission aims to carry out several reconnaissance flights on the moon Europa over several years, with a view to determining whether it is capable of receiving and sustaining living beings.

Clipper wants to confirm that Europe does indeed have a vast ocean, that is, that it has water, the basic element for life, in addition to helping scientists better understand the astrobiological potential of habitable worlds beyond Earth.

The mission is expected to launch in October 2024, arriving in Jupiter’s orbit in 2030.

2023-11-08 21:43:00
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