How Your Name Will Fly Aboard NASA’s Europa Clipper

Go behind the scenes in the Microdevices Laboratory at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to see how your name could be sent to Jupiter’s moon Europa as part of NASA’s “Message in a Bottle” campaign. Names will be stenciled in tiny letters on special microchips that will ride aboard the Europa Clipper spacecraft as it journeys 1.8 billion miles (2.6 billion kilometers) to the icy moon. See how technicians will use an electron beam to stencil names onto microchips, where each line of text is smaller than 1/1000th the width of a human hair. The microchips will be attached to a metal plate engraved with the original poem “In Praise of Mystery,” written by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón to celebrate the mission. That plate will then be attached to the exterior of the Europa Clipper spacecraft. NASA’s Europa Clipper mission aims to determine whether Europa has conditions that could support life. Once spacecraft assembly has been completed at JPL, the orbiter will be shipped to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in preparation for launch in October 2024. You can add your name to the “Message in a Bottle” campaign through Dec. 31, 2023. To sign, go to: Find more information about Europa here: JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech