How to send your name to Jupiter with NASA

Anyone can join NASA's Message in a Bottle campaign, which will send your name on a space journey to Jupiter’s moon Europa next year.

“‘Message in a Bottle’ is the perfect convergence of science, art, and technology, and we are excited to share with the world the opportunity to be a part of Europa Clipper’s journey,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, DC.

You can join the mission and send your names until 11:59 pm EST on December 31, 2023. Thereafter, the names will be placed on a microchip along with the text of "In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa" by Nobel Prize in Literature Ada Limon. The chip will be sent into space.

“I just love the thought that our names will be traveling across our solar system aboard the radiation-tolerant spacecraft that seeks to unlock the secrets of Jupiter’s frozen moon.” said Nicola Fox.

Previously, NASA has already held similar campaigns, during which millions of people sent their names to ride along with Artemis I and several Mars spacecraft.

Set to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the spacecraft will travel 1.8 billion miles to reach the Jupiter system, where it will arrive in 2030.

The Europa Clipper mission is exploring the existence of places beneath Europa's surface that are theoretically suitable for supporting life. In particular, the project team seeks to learn more about the ice shell and the ocean beneath it, along with the moon’s composition and geology.

It is planned that the spacecraft will fly by Europa about 50 times and then it will log another half-billion miles while the system gathers data on the subsurface ocean, the ice crust, and the moon’s atmosphere.

It is believed that a detailed study of Europa will allow us to better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet.