Beyond Earth: Send Your Name To The Moon
NASA is letting you send your name to the moon, and you’ll be able to brag about it on social media (of course). It’s just your name though, so, sadly, you won’t be able to take an outer space selfie. So, how does this work? Later this year, NASA is sending a rover to the Moon’s South Pole under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. The space agency’s first-ever robotic Moon rover, VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover), is going to spend 100 days traveling across our closest celestial neighbor’s surface.
The VIPER rover will sample different kinds of lunar soil and environments. Additionally, it will also be the first rover to ever measure “the location and concentration of water ice and other resources.” But it’s not the first time NASA has let people send their names to space.
#SendYourName
In 2020, NASA let people send their names to Mars through a rover. Now, you have a chance to do that again with the Moon, and anyone can participate. The first step is to fill out a boarding pass on their website. You have until 11:59 p.m. EST on March 15 to sign up. Once collected, the agency will take the names and attach them to the rover.
The space agency is also encouraging participants to share their requests on social media using the hashtag #SendYourName. They may be in space, but NASA still wants to get love on social media.
“With VIPER, we are going to study and explore parts of the Moon’s surface no one has ever been to before – and with this campaign, we are inviting the world to be part of that risky yet rewarding journey,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a news release. “Just think: Our names will ride along as VIPER navigates across the rugged terrain of the lunar South Pole and gathers valuable data that will help us better understand the history of the Moon and the environment where we plan to send Artemis astronauts.”
This initiative is similar to past NASA projects, allowing millions to send their names on missions like Artemis I, various Mars spacecraft, and the upcoming Europa Clipper. “It draws from the agency’s long tradition of shipping inspirational messages on spacecraft that have explored our solar system and beyond,” highlighted in the news release.
