Dec16

“To exist in this vast universe for a speck of time is the great gift of life.” Author Unknown

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How to send your name to space on NASA’s next moon mission 

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NASA loves a public-participation moment,

but this one is pretty cool, especially if you’re a space nerd.

The agency is giving anyone on Earth

a chance to send their name to the Moon on Artemis II,

the first crewed lunar mission in more than fifty years.

It’s free, fast, and takes about as much effort as signing up for yet another streaming trial you’ll forget to cancel. Will anything “special” happen? No. But it is a fun way to be a part of history.

Artemis II is scheduled to launch no later than April 2026 with four astronauts on board: Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. Their ten-day journey will push about 4,600 miles beyond the Moon, loop them back toward Earth, and give NASA a real-time test of its deep-space systems before future missions that aim even farther out.

If you want your name along for the ride, NASA says it only takes three steps.

1. VISIT THE REGISTRATION PAGE

NASA’s Send Your Name with Artemis portal is where the whole thing starts. Click, open, done.

2. ENTER YOUR NAME AND A PIN

You submit your first and last name, then choose a 4- to 7-digit PIN. NASA warns that it cannot recover a lost PIN later, which might be the most on-brand government sentence ever written.

3. DOWNLOAD YOUR DIGITAL BOARDING PASS

Once you hit submit, NASA generates a personalized boarding pass that looks fancier than anything handed out at an actual airport. Save it, screenshot it, cherish it.

Every submitted name will be stored on an SD card mounted inside the Orion spacecraft. As Orion heads into deep space, the crew will spend the first two days testing systems near Earth before firing the service module engine to break out of orbit. The translunar injection burn will send them on a four-day figure-eight path around the far side of the Moon. Along the way, scientists will collect data on radiation, human performance, and communication tech that will support future missions to Mars.

After the lunar swing, the spacecraft will return for a high-speed reentry and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, where NASA and the Department of Defense will recover the crew and capsule.

Sending your name obviously doesn’t make you part of the mission crew, but it does give you a tiny foothold in a milestone flight humans have been trying to reach again for half a century. As far as free souvenirs from space go, it beats a fridge magnet. And, hey. It’s wholesome fun. We need more of that.

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“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff.

We are a way for the universe to know itself.”

– Carl Sagan

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Source credit: Vice Magazine, Ashley Fike

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59 responses »

  1. I’m sure this will be very popular, but I doubt I will be adding my name. Despite being of the right age (9-17) when the space-race excitement was all the rage, I was never actually interested in it. I remember my mum being so upset when the Russians sent a dog into space. She told me later that she couldn’t stop crying when she realised how it would suffer. Best wishes, Pete.
    ‘A Russian dog named Laika died in space in 1957 aboard the Soviet Sputnik 2 spacecraft; she was the first animal to orbit Earth but died from overheating and panic within hours of launch, as the technology for safe return hadn’t yet been developed, making it a one-way mission. Her death from hyperthermia, not lack of oxygen as initially claimed, was revealed decades later, sparking ethical debates about animal testing for space exploration.’

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  5. Oh this was so exciting. I have added my name and got my boarding pass and will be sharing it with my online community – and might even add it to my Christmas emails.
    Thank you for sharing x

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  17. Fascinating! You find the best stuff, Beth — free and wholesome. So good. And I’m still laughing about “takes about as much effort as signing up for yet another streaming trial you’ll forget to cancel.” Oh, that’s relatable!

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  21. Goodreads [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/102042-to-exist-in-this-vast-universe-for-a-speck-of] attributes the quotation to Terry Goodkind, and gives a longer version:

    “To exist in this vast universe for a speck of time is the great gift of life. Our tiny sliver of time is our gift of life. It is our only life. The universe will go on, indifferent to our brief existence, but while we are here we touch not just part of that vastness, but also the lives around us. Life is the gift each of us has been given. Each life is our own and no one else’s. It is precious beyond all counting. It is the greatest value we can have. Cherish it for what it truly is….. Your life is yours alone. Rise up and live it.”

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