Six weeks stay so that you can upload your title to a microchip that may journey aboard the spacecraft because it explores Jupiter’s moon Europa.
It’s no longer each day that contributors of the general public have the risk to ship their names into deep area past Mars, all of the solution to Jupiter and its moon Europa. However with NASA’s Europa Clipper, you’ve that chance: Names will journey aboard the spacecraft because it trips 1.8 billion miles (2.6 billion kilometers) to this icy moon, the place an ocean hides underneath a frozen outer shell. The closing date to sign up for the project’s “Message in a Bottle” marketing campaign is simplest six weeks away. The marketing campaign closes at 11:59 p.m. EST, Dec. 31, 2023.
To this point, about 700,000 names had been submitted. As soon as all of the names had been collected, technicians within the Microdevices Laboratory at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California will use an electron beam to stencil them onto a dime-size silicon microchip. Every line of textual content is smaller than 1/a thousandth the width of a human hair (75 nanometers).
See how your title will probably be stenciled onto a dime-size microchip at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This video takes you into the Microdevices Laboratory. Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The chip will probably be connected to a steel plate engraved with the unique poem “In Reward of Thriller,” written by way of U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón to rejoice the project. Using at the external of the spacecraft, the poem and names will probably be like a message in a bottle as they make about 50 shut flybys of the sea international.
The project will log a half-billion miles (800 million kilometers) throughout those orbits because the spacecraft’s payload of science tools gathers knowledge on Europa’s subsurface ocean, icy crust, and environment to resolve if the moon may just reinforce lifestyles.
As soon as meeting of Europa Clipper has been finished at JPL, the orbiter will probably be shipped to NASA’s Kennedy House Middle in Florida in preparation for its October 2024 release.
“Message in a Bottle” attracts from NASA’s lengthy custom of transport inspirational messages on spacecraft that experience explored our sun machine and past. This system objectives to spark the imaginations of other folks around the globe because the Voyager spacecraft did in 1977 by way of sending a time tablet of sounds and pictures reflecting the range of lifestyles on Earth.
To signal, learn the poem, and listen to Limón recite it in an animated video, cross to:
The website online additionally allows contributors to create and obtain a customizable memento – a demonstration of your title on a message in a bottle towards a rendering of Europa and Jupiter – to commemorate the enjoy. Contributors are inspired to proportion their enthusiasm on social media the use of the hashtag #SendYourName.
Extra Concerning the Undertaking
Europa Clipper’s major science function is to resolve whether or not there are puts underneath Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, that might reinforce lifestyles. The project’s 3 major science targets are to resolve the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and its floor interactions with the sea underneath, to analyze its composition, and to signify its geology. The project’s detailed exploration of Europa will assist scientists higher perceive the astrobiological attainable for liveable worlds past our planet.
To find extra details about Europa right here:
europa.nasa.gov
Information Media Contacts
Gretchen McCartney
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-6215
gretchen.p.mccartney@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
NASA Headquarters, Washington
301-286-6284 / 202-358-1501
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov
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