In 2024, if all goes to plan, a spacecraft named the Europa Clipper will embark on a journey to an icy, grey moon of Jupiter lined in rust-colored gashes. It should swim alongside the Jovian satellite tv for pc’s gravitational tides, half dealing with the orb from orbit, half uncovered to the airless ocean of house. And alongside its high-tech spectrometer, radar system, optical imager and different devices constructed to seek for proof of alien habitats, the Europa Clipper will likely be bringing my title. It could possibly deliver yours, too.
You simply have to enroll in NASA’s free “Message in a Bottle program” here. The marketing campaign closes at 11:59 p.m. EST on Dec. 31 (0459 GMT on Jan. 1); on the time I am penning this, virtually 900,000 names have been entered.
In case you’re uncertain why this issues, nevertheless, you are not alone. Proper after signing my title, and actually earlier than I even knew what that will entail, I assumed fairly deeply about why I need this to occur. In any case, the spacecraft will not be touchdown wherever. There is not any one on Europa to obtain our message. Every title is one amongst a whole lot of hundreds of others. Even our names are merely intangible ideas created to indicate our existence, an concept that linguists and philosophers have plunged into for years. With out us, what are our names? With out anybody to learn them, the place have they honestly gone?
This despatched me right into a spiral. It felt like I used to be collaborating in a extremely summary idea.
Associated: A poem for Europa Clipper: US Poet Laureate Ada Limón reveals ode to fly on NASA Jupiter moon mission
I finally determined that the purpose of this may not be to yield any bodily penalties, and even any notable theoretical penalties for that matter. I feel I despatched my title to Europa as a result of that is the place it isn’t speculated to be. I am tethered to Earth, so if my title is meaningless with out my existence, maybe it ought to keep right here too. But, because of trendy know-how, it would not must.
Even when my title would not have a concrete presence in actuality, and will subsequently be capable of “journey” throughout light-years and maybe transcend dimensions, I’m not certain it will possibly “be” someplace except there’s somebody in that place to think about it. And there is no one on Europa (I suppose, to the perfect of our information) to think about it. Or to think about yours. So possibly NASA is providing us the subsequent smartest thing, permitting our names to take residence someplace apart from the neighborhood of Earth, the one neighborhood through which they have been considered.
So after sorting by means of all this, and telling my members of the family I signed them up as properly (to which my father expectedly responded with a thumbs up emoji and the phrase “okay”) I discovered how, precisely, Message in a Bottle works.
In a nutshell, scientists with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory designed a particular “silicon wafer” that appears one thing like an excellent shiny, metallic disk. They’re then in a position to flip small photos like, say, a bubble letter “A” into very tiny, readable textual content. These small photos are known as “bitmaps.” Every title entered into the venture will endure this course of, ultimately changing into textual content on the dimensions of 75 nanometers, or a thousandth the width of a human hair. All of the names can then be “stenciled” on silicon microchips, constructed from the unique wafers, by way of an electron beam.
All these chips can then be loaded onto the Europa Clipper, which is able to hopefully journey over a billion miles whereas catapulting itself by means of the forces of different planets till it reaches the gravitational embrace of Europa. The spacecraft will then make almost 50 flybys of the moon at closest-approach altitudes solely 16 miles (25 kilometers) above the floor. In the meantime, it will dutifully be trying to find proof of subsurface oceans and even perhaps proof of biosignatures.
So, to take a line from one among my favourite paragraphs in the novel “Red Mars,” microchips engraved with phrases that symbolize virtually 1 million people will sit in a location from which the Earth seems as solely a star.
Finally, this entire train might not change something besides my perspective, however I feel that is sufficient.
