Send Your Name to Mars

Do you ever plan to go beyond earth? NASA offers travel opportunities to Mars for which anyone can sign up from the official website of NASA. This opportunity is open for all to become a passenger on the next Mars mission. NASA has launched an initiative for all to “Send Your Name to Mars”, it is a program that lets people take part by submitting their name to Mars.

Though, even if you are not an astronaut, there still be a chance for you to leave your footprints outside this planet.

How do get to register in the “Send Your Name to Mars” program?

Don’t just get excited, just enroll yourself and get yourself register with the “Send Your Name to Mars” program of NASA.  All you need to do is to go to the official website of NASA and fill in your basic details including your name, country, postal code, and email address, and that’s it. You are all set for your spaceflight.

As soon as you get yourself registered, you will straight away get your “Boarding Pass” and will become a part of more than 19 million people who already joined the program.

“Landing on Mars is always an incredibly difficult task and we are proud to continue building on our past success,” said Jet Propulsion Laboratory director Michael Watkins, per ABC 15.

At the time of writing, more than 4 million people signed up, China has the highest number of names flying out with the US who has the second-highest number of signed up, followed by Philippians, U.K., Russia, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, France, India, and Indonesia.

Submitting your name means it will be etched onto a microchip with an electron beam subject to a review process. The process of etching the names onto the chip is called electron or “e-beam” lithography, it uses a focused beam of the electron to form patterns into materials.

The beam is quite accurate and can write on a scale down to one nanometer. This is about 1 million times thinner than the sheet of normal paper.

This microchip will further be placed onto the next NASA spacecraft destined for Mars. Currently, it is not confirmed what spacecraft this would be like, nor when this Mars mission will occur. Though the boarding pass gives a travel date of July 2026 and like the Perseverance rover, the spacecraft will launch from Cape Canaveral at the Florida Air Force Station, landing at the Jezero crater on Mars.

NASA offered people to get their names carried on missions to Mars several times, including Mars Science Lab, Mars Exploration Rovers, MAVEN, Orion, and InSight projects.