This will be the Europa Clipper probe

If all goes as planned, investigate Europe Clipper You will take off on a rocket Falcon Heavy From SpaceX in October of this year. We are talking about an ambitious NASA mission whose main goal is to determine whether Jupiter's moon Europa has the right conditions for life.

The probe will travel more than 2.5 billion kilometers to reach its destination. But it will not only be equipped with a wide range of scientific instruments such as cameras and spectrometers. He will also carry with him a plaque engraved in the purest style from the known “golden records” of the legendary Voyager probes.

The “golden record” of the Europa Clipper probe

It's not every day that we send cutting-edge engineering pieces into the depths of space. NASA In the 1970s He was clear about that, and through a working group led by Carl Sagan, he prepared Golden records of Voyager probes To send a “message to the universe” that can last for millions of years.

Europa Clipper represents a new opportunity to repeat this feat (although other missions have done it before as well), so the US space agency doesn't want to miss it. This time there will not be a gold record per se, but rather a metal plate engraved with a variety of information representing our planet.

For several months NASA developed a campaign known as “Message in a bottle“, as people from all over the world called for it Include their names On a microchip located in the center of the plate made of a rare, non-corrosive metal called tantalum. Surprisingly, more than 2.6 million people participated.

Technicians at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory took on the task of finding a way to engrave several names on a coin-sized piece of silicon. They achieved this by using a beam of electrons to create lines of text a thousand smaller than a human hair (75 nanometers).

As we see in the pictures, NASA has decorated both sides of the plate. One of the faces shows A Bottle drawing They float in Jupiter's orbit alongside its moons. Below is the poemIn Praise of Obscurity: An Ode to Europe“Handwritten specifically for the assignment by an American poet.” Ada Lemon.

In the lower left corner there is a picture Ronald Greeley, a professor at Arizona State University who died in 2011 and whose contributions laid the foundation for the mission. Engraved on top is the famous Drake equation from the 1960s estimating the possibility of finding extraterrestrial life.

On the other side of this painting, which measures approximately 18 x 28 centimeters, we find visual representations of sound waves. These represent the work of a group of linguists who compiled the word “Water” in 103 languages. In the center there is also a symbol that means “water” in American Sign Language. This piece is supposed to begin its journey to Jupiter in October of this year.

Photos | NASA (1, 2, 3)

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