NASA is offering to send your name into space for free, and here's how to do it

Passionate about astronomy, do you spend your nights stargazing? If you fail to become an astronaut, you can send your name 2.9 billion kilometers from Earth. As reported HuffPost NASA already offers all citizens the opportunity to participate in its program Message in a bottle.

It will be open from June 1 to December 31, 2023, and plans to copy participants' names for free onto microchips mounted on the spacecraft that will carry the Europa Clipper probe to Europa in October 2024, one of Jupiter's moons.

Searching for traces of life

on Program websiteIt is possible to know the number of people who participated directly and know their nationalities. Of the more than 2,300,000 names listed as of December 29, nearly 663,000 came from the United States, 425,000 from India, and 132,700 from the United Kingdom. With more than 24,700 signatures, France surpasses most of its European neighbours, such as Germany, Spain and Italy. The names will be accompanied by a poem by American Ada Lemon. In Praise of Obscurity: An Ode to Europe.

Although this program has attracted millions of citizens around the world, it is clearly not the main goal of the mission. The Europa Clipper probe must study the characteristics of the moon Europa, in order to determine whether it has suitable conditions for the emergence of life. Several studies have already revealed that beneath its frozen surface it harbors a liquid, salty ocean, the composition of which is similar to that of our own oceans. Europa is also home to geysers, indicating the presence of underwater volcanoes.