SA is offering everyone a chance to be a part of its next mission to Mars. A portal on NASA’s official website is allowing space enthusiasts to send in their names, which will then be added to a ‘dime-sized’ chip that is to be a part of the NASA’s InSight Lander mission. The mission is set to take off in March 2018 and will carry two such (8mm square) silicon wafer microchips along with other scientific instruments. NASA had offered a similar chance back in 2015 for public members to send in their names for the first of the two microchips. NASA had then received 826,923 submissions for the same from the world over, within a 22-day window. Submission of names for the second microchip will be entertained from October 2 to November 1, 2017, and this time.
Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will embed the names of the participants on the microchip by using an electron beam to write in lines smaller than ‘one-thousandth the width of a human hair’. The very same technology was also used to perform this practice at the time of Orion’s flight, NASA’s mission to Mars in 2014. The microchips will be affixed to the Insight lander deck and once on Mars, will remain there forever. Those interested can enrol for the NASA Frequent Flyer here.
The InSight lander mission is the first by NASA which will be dedicated to studying the deep interiors of Mars. Acronym for ‘Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport’, the mission is set to take off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, in May 2018 and will land on Mars in November 2018. The NASA InSight lander project is being managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory which is a part of NASA's Discovery Program and is located in Pasadena, California.
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