The U.S. space agency NASA is inviting people to have their names engraved a microchip bound a moon of Jupiter. The spacecraft Europa Clipper will set for Jupiter's moon Europa. The craft is set to embark its 2.6-billion-kilometre voyage October 2024. The journey the heavens will take six years. Sending the names is part a time-capsule project called "Message in a Bottle". The names will be etched next to a piece poetry by U.S. poet Ada Limon called, "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa". NASA said: "The poem connects the two water worlds - Earth, yearning to reach and understand what makes a world habitable, and Europa, waiting secrets yet to be explored."
More than 700,000 names have already been submitted to NASA. Engineers will use an electron beam to stencil them a tiny silicon microchip. NASA said: "Each line text is smaller than 1/1000th the width a human hair (75 nanometres)." It added: "Riding the exterior the spacecraft, the poem and names will be a message in a bottle as they make 50 close flybys of [Europa's] ocean world." Europa is one Jupiter's 95 officially recognized moons. The Europa Clipper will gather data the moon's atmosphere, icy crust and ocean. NASA said: "Europa is such a promising place to better understand the astro-biological potential habitable worlds beyond Earth."
