You Can Send Your Name to Mars

You can’t visit other planets (yet), but your name can. NASA is sending the names of millions of people to Mars. Unlike the ” name a star after yourself ” suggestions, this is not a scam; at the low cost of a “universal tax,” the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will laser-etch your name (or the name of a loved one, pet, or imaginary friend) onto a microchip that will remain on a future Mars. mission, hopefully within the next few years.

How to send your name to Mars

There is nothing easier than sending a name to Mars. Simply visit NASA’s website , enter the name you’d like to see on Mars, your country, and your zip code. If you’re willing to give them your email address, you’ll become a member of the NASA Frequent Flyer Club and receive over a billion free frequent flyer miles. You’ll also have your own “boarding pass” that you can share on Facebook and Twitter or print and frame.

There are already more than 10 million names on Mars

This isn’t the first time the space agency has transported fan names to the Red Planet. The last time NASA did this, 10,932,295 human names were inscribed on three fingernail-sized silicon chips using an electron beam, and those chips were attached to the Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in 2020. Since then, these names have constantly hung on Mars. rides around with Perseverance still active, helps search for water and evidence of past life, and generally takes part in space adventures. Lucky!

Surprisingly long history of sending people’s names into space

To maintain public interest (and funding), NASA and other space agencies often sponsor outreach programs designed to interact with non-scientists and non-nerdists. Sending people’s names to distant places in space has proven to be an effective way to stimulate interest and goodwill.

The first names placed on the monument and sent from Earth were in 1971, when the crew of Apollo 15 left a plaque on the Moon with the nicknames of the 14 astronauts and cosmonauts who died in the line of duty.

Sending the names of ordinary citizens to the stars began with the space advocacy group The Planetary Society, whose members’ names were scaled down and included in the 1996 Mars Pathfinder mission, the Cassini probe that crashed into Saturn in 2017, and other space adventures .

So far, about 20 spacecraft have sent names into space, including more than a million names included on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and 430,000 names included on a CD attached to the New Horizons probe , launched in 2005. The passengers have flown past the mission’s original destination, Pluto, and are now in the Kuiper belt, and will soon find themselves beyond our solar system and into the great unknown.

The question of whether it’s a good idea to give your name to any old alien who accidentally intercepts a spaceship remains an open question, but no extraterrestrial answers have yet been forthcoming.