Most of us will never go to space, but that doesn’t mean we can’t send our names there. As part of NASA’s MAVEN mission to Mars, they’re asking the people of Earth to include their names on a DVD that will orbit Mars. They’re also taking poetry submissions in haiku form. Go ahead and let the Universe know you exist. It’s free and takes about two minutes.
To submit your name all you need to do is head over to the Going to Mars with MAVEN page on the University of Colorado site and register for a free account. From there you can fill out the form to get your name on the DVD that’s being shot into space. That’s probably worth two minutes of your time. You even get a digital certificate you can print out to prove you submitted your name.
It looks like you can keep entering names from the same account, but I’m not sure if subsequent submissions override earlier ones. I entered both my name and my daughter’s. After both names the site gave me a link to a certificate image that looks like this:
All the names that get submitted will be included since it would take an awful lot of names to fill up a DVD. I’m not sure how closely they’re monitoring the name submissions, but I’d imagine they’re going to try to keep names like “Seymour Butz” out of space.
They’re also going to be including three messages in the form of haiku poems. Once you have an account you can submit a poem in English and other users will vote on their favorite. The three most popular messages get sent to Mars.
(via Going to Mars With MAVEN, image via NASA Goddard Photo and Video)
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