UPI – NASA announced that the upcoming Europa Clipper Jupiter mission, scheduled for launch in October, will carry significant messages from humanity alongside its scientific endeavours to assess potential life-supporting conditions.
The spacecraft, bound for Jupiter’s moon Europa, will not only be equipped with scientific instruments for conducting experiments and gathering data but will also feature an engraving of In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa, handwritten by United States Poet Laureate Ada Limon.
Additionally, a silicon chip containing over 2.6 million names from the public, submitted as part of NASA’s “Messaged In a Bottle Campaign”, will be included as the focal point within a bottle placed amidst the Jovian system.
A seven by 11 inch plate made of the metal tantalum features waveform engravings of the word “water” in 103 languages.
It includes the Drake Equation etched onto the plate. That’s Astronomer Frank Drake’s mathematical formulation from 1961 to estimate the possibility of finding advanced extraterrestrial civilisations.
“We’ve packed a lot of thought and inspiration into this plate design, as we have into this mission itself,” said NASA Project Scientist Robert Pappalardo in a statement.
According to NASA, the main science goal of the mission is to determine whether there are places below Jupiters icy moon Europa that might support life.
