Secure your spot on Jupiter's moon Europa before year end

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Although we can't currently explore the captivating ocean worlds in our solar system, NASA is sending a message to Jupiter's moon Europa with over 2 million names in a cosmic message in a bottle.

Sign up before the year ends and your name could be chosen as one of the lucky individuals to be included on the Europa Clipper spacecraft, set to launch in October 2024 from Kennedy Space Center. This highly anticipated mission will travel 1.8 billion miles to explore Jupiter's moon, Europa.

Upon reaching orbit in 2030, Europa Clipper will dedicate the following years to conducting close flybys of the ice-covered moon in order to investigate the potential for life within the ocean beneath its surface. Europa is recognized as one of the prime targets for the search for extraterrestrial life among the numerous ocean world moons.

Aside from a collection of nine scientific instruments, Europa Clipper will also carry a poem penned by the US poet laureate, Ada Limón.

As part of her tenure as a laureate, Limón penned "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa." The original poem will be inscribed in Limón's handwriting on a tantalum metal plate that will seal the spacecraft's delicate electronics inside a vault to shield them from Jupiter's intense radiation. The poem, along with microchips bearing the names of individuals who participate in NASA's Message in a Bottle campaign, will be positioned inside the vault.

Once all the names have been gathered, they will be included on the spacecraft currently being constructed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The space agency provides a real-time view of Europa Clipper's assembly on its website.

At JPL's Microdevices Laboratory, technicians will utilize electron beams to etch names onto dime-sized silicon chips. Each name will be smaller than 1/1000th the width of a human hair.

Sending names to space aboard missions is a tradition at NASA, with examples including Artemis I, the Perseverance rover, and Parker Solar Probe.

The Europa Clipper is NASA's largest spacecraft designed for a planetary mission. Once its massive solar arrays are deployed, it will span over 100 feet (30.5 meters) across and stand about 16 feet (5 meters) tall. Scheduled to arrive in orbit in April 2030, the Europa Clipper will conduct close to 50 flybys of Europa, including one that will bring it within 16 miles (25.7 kilometers) above the moon's thick ice crust to survey almost the entire surface.

The spacecraft will use cameras, spectrometers, ice-penetrating radar and a thermal instrument to understand how the moon formed and if its possible for life to exist on icy ocean worlds.