NASA -- As space exploration is gradually being opened for commercial probabilities, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has yet again opened another door for entertaining public participation in space exploration. Recently, the agency has announced that people can register to have their names sent to the Red Planet, together with the rover on 2020.
The rover is leaving Earth not just to bring those mementos to the Red Planet. Its main mission is to gather the information that will help answer questions on the possibility of human life on Mars, and if it has previously hosted alien life. The robot that will be sent to uncover this mission is equipped with instruments and tools to help scientists from Earth to figure out if life was ever possible on Mars.
On top of that mission, the rover is also expected to dig deep into the Martian soil to collect samples that will help scientists uncover if life was ever possible in the past or in the future. Those samples will be left on the ground, hopeful that another space rover in another mission will be able to collect it and bring it back to Earth.
And while the Mars rover 2020 will be doing all the digging, collecting and looking for signs of life today and in the past, it will also leave behind names of people from different walks of life. In fact, a date has been set for the deadline of name submissions -- September 30 of this year. The NASA engineers of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory will be assigned to etch each name on a silicon chip using an electric beam. It will then be sent out with the rover to carry on its journey.
No, the names will not appear in lights or sculpted on the surface of Mars. Instead, its size would only be one-thousandth of the width of a strand of human hair. It may seem so small, but it will allow a lot of names to be included in a single chip that is the size of a dime. NASA has offered this service to the public when they were sending out the InSight lander on Mars in 2018.
