Deadline to send your name to Jupiter’s Moon is running out; see how to do it

The deadline for people to sign their names next to the poem that will be sent to Europa, Jupiter’s frozen moon, is running out.

NASA announced that the campaign deadline ends at 11:59 pm on December 31st. To date, around 700,000 names have been submitted.

The “Message in a Bottle” campaign allows anyone to sign their name next to the poem written by American poet Ada Limón. The poem is recorded on NASA’s robotic Europa Clipper spacecraft, and the names of participants will be recorded on microchips in the spacecraft.

Once all the names are gathered, technicians at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Microdevices Laboratory will use an electron beam to etch them onto a silicon microchip the size of a dime.

Each line of text is less than one thousandth (1/1000) the width of a human hair (75 nanometers).

“Message in a Bottle” Campaign

Click here to add your name to the spacecraft.

The mission will travel nearly 3 billion kilometers to the Jupiter system. The Europa Clipper is scheduled to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in October 2024 and reach Jupiter’s orbit by 2030.

Over the course of several years, dozens of flybys will be performed on Jupiter’s frozen moon Europa, gathering detailed measurements to determine whether the moon has suitable conditions for life.

The idea that sending a “message in a bottle” is a campaign in which NASA, the US Poet Laureate and the US Library of Congress collaborate.

A poem for Europe

Water is the element that brings our planet and Jupiter’s moon, Europa, together.

NASA scientists have strong evidence that Europa has an internal ocean beneath its outer layer of ice, a huge body of salty water swirling around the moon’s rocky interior.

According to the NASA website, Limón’s poem connects the two water worlds — Earth, eager to reach and understand what makes a world habitable, and Europe, waiting with secrets yet to be explored.

Check out a translation of Ada Limón’s poem:

In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europe

Arching under the full night sky
of black expansiveness, we point out
to the planets we know, we

We preach quick wishes on stars. From the earth,
we read the sky as if it were an infallible book
of the universe, experienced and evident.

Still, there are mysteries beneath our sky:
the whale song, the singing bird singing
his call from the branch of a tree shaken by the wind.

We are creatures of constant wonder,
curious about the beauty, the leaves and flowers,
for pain and pleasure, for sun and shadow.

And it’s not the darkness that unites us,
nor the cold distance of space, but
the water offering, every drop of rain,

every stream, every pulse, every vein.
O second moon, we too are made
of water, of vast and inviting seas.

We too are made of wonders, of
great and common loves, from small invisible worlds,
of a need to cry out in the darkness.

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*Published by Iasmin Paiva, with information from Fernanda Pinotti, from CNN