NASA invites public to send names to Mars - SILive.com

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Although it may be years before the first humans set foot on Mars, NASA is inviting the public to send their names to the Red Planet in the agency’s Mars 2020 rover.

The names would be stenciled on chips onboard the Mars rover, which is scheduled to launch as early as July 2020, according to the agency’s news release.

The spacecraft is expected to touch down on Mars in February 2021.

The rover is a robotic scientist weighing more than 2,300 pounds. It will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize the planet’s climate and geology, collect samples for future return to Earth and pave the way for human exploration of Mars, according to NASA’s news release.

And your name can go along for the ride.

You can send your name with the Mars 2020 rover mission. (Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech)

“As we get ready to launch this historic Mars mission, we want everyone to share in this journey of exploration,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. "It’s an exciting time for NASA, as we embark on this voyage to answer profound questions about our neighboring planet, and even the origins of life itself.”

Sending your name to Mars comes with a souvenir boarding pass.

You can add your name to the list and obtain a souvenir boarding pass to Mars from now until Sept. 30.

NASA will use an electron beam to stencil the submitted names onto a silicon chip with lines of text smaller than one-thousandth the width of a human hair. At that size, more than a million names can be written on a single dime-size chip. Those chips will ride on the rover under a glass cover.

NASA will use Mars 2020 and other missions to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. The agency is also returning American astronauts to the moon in 2024.

According to NASA, government, industry and international partners will join the agency in a global effort to build and test the systems needed for human missions to Mars and beyond.

Mars 2020 will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

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