Now You Can Send Your Name To Jupiter's Moon On NASA's Europa Clipper
NDTV
There have been over 700,000 names submitted so far.
Space enthusiasts have a unique chance to etch their names in a spacecraft destined for Jupiter's Moon, Europa. The names will be added to a microchip that will ride aboard the spacecraft, as per American space agency NASA.
People are invited to engrave their names next to a poem by US poet Ada Limon as part of the "Message in a Bottle" project. The robotic spacecraft Europa Clipper, which runs on solar power, will have microchips with enrolled names laser inscribed on them. With a launch date in October 2024, the spacecraft will travel 1.8 billion miles (2.6 billion kilometres) over the course of around six years, providing a once-in-a-lifetime chance for individuals to participate in interplanetary exploration.
There have been over 700,000 names submitted so far. Once all the names have been collected, technicians at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California's Microdevices Laboratory will use an electron beam to stencil them onto a silicon microchip the size of a dime. Every line of text is less than 75 nanometers, or 1/1000th the width of a human hair.
