2023-06-19 21:29:31
You may not have the opportunity to travel to space, but now you have the opportunity to make your name on Jupiter thanks to NASA. The United States space agency is organizing the Europa Clipper interplanetary mission and has opened the call for thousands of people to register their names on the journey to the largest planet in the Solar System.
NASA’s Message in a Bottle campaign invites the public to sign a poem written by American poet Ada Limón. The text is inspired by the moon Europa and will be engraved on the inside of a tantalum metal plate that seals the shield of the Europa Clipper ship, while the names of the participants are engraved on the microchips.
The Europa Clipper mission consists of a 2.9 billion km journey to the Jupiter system. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket will depart with the Europa Clipper from the Kennedy Space Center in October 2024. The spacecraft will reach its goal in 2030 and make flybys of Europa, the gas giant’s icy moon. NASA will investigate whether there are the right conditions for microbial life.
In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europe
In case you wonder, here we share the poem by Ada Limón.
In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europe
Arched under the dyed night cloth
of a black expansiveness, we point out
the planets we know, fix
dreams hurried to the stars. From the earth,
we read the firmament as if it were an infallible book
covering the universe, expert and evident.
Even so, our sky conceals mysteries;
the song of the whale, the bird that chirps
his song from the branch of a tree shaken by the wind.
We are creatures of lingering wonder,
curious before the beauty, the leaf and the flower,
before the duel and the pleasure, the sun and the shadow.
And what unites us is not darkness,
nor the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,
every stream, every pulsebeat, every vein.
Oh second moon, we, too, are
of water, of vast seas that invite.
We, too, are made of wonders, of loves
great and ordinary, of invisible and minute worlds,
of the need to launch a call through the darkness.
Do you dare to participate? Click on this link to register your name in the program. No need to create an account or anything on the NASA website. They will only ask for your first name, last name, country and postal code.
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