From now until September 30, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory invites you to send your names to Mars 2020 mission. All you need to do is write down your name and place of residence on this form on the NASA site, and click “Submit” – and your name will go into the robotic to be launched next year to the nearest planet to us.
Adding the name will immediately give you the option to print or save as a souvenir the “flight ticket” with the points you have accumulated on the regular passenger – more than 500 million km to Mars, plus points from previous trips if you registered with them. Launch – Cape Canaveral in Florida, the landing site – Jezero crater landing area on Mars, and the launcher that will bring your name there – Atlas V-541.
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After collecting all the names, they will be transferred to a chip lab and inserted into a tiny silicon chip. Each line of text will be 77 nanometers across, less than a thousandth the thickness of a human hair. Thus, it will be possible to engrave more than a million names into a chip the size of a coin.
But according to all estimates, more than one chip will be needed. Just last year, 2.4 million names were written on two disks that sent to NASA’s InSight spacecraft, and the Mars 2020 project is expected to receive much higher attention – and probably much more names – to date, more than 330,000 have already been registered.
“We want the public to be able to participate in this search,” said Thomas Zorobuken of NASA. “This is an exciting time for NASA. We’re starting a journey to solve basic questions about our next planet, and even about the origin of life.”
The robotic rover, the size of a car, is expected to take off in the middle of next year and land on Mars in February 2021. The lander’s primary purpose is to investigate what appears to be an ancient river delta, at the edge of an enormous crater, and look for signs of life. The stones and rocks in the crater may contain organic compounds and traces of microbial life.
“The Delta is a good place to look for a life that has deposited and saved for billions of years since the lake existed,” said scientist Ken Farley of the Mars 2020 project. The Rover will collect samples to find a way to bring them back to Earth in the distant future.
NASA is also planning to launch a Mars-guided mini-helicopter that will be connected to the belly of the rover and will conduct an experiment to create oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, which could be of assistance when astronauts land on Mars, possibly by 2030. And perhaps for decades or hundreds of years, researchers will be able to reach the chips of Mars 2020. Just hope they will not forget a microscope.
