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NASA revealed what the message will be sent to Europa, Jupiter’s moon, with the Europa Clipper mission. To continue the tradition of the space agency sending messages to distant destinations in space, the spacecraft will carry a metal plate with a special engraving.
Europa is a moon covered by a frozen crust, and there is strong evidence that this layer hides an ocean, so vast that it would have twice the water of all the oceans on Earth. When launched in October, the Europa Clipper probe will travel to this distant world carrying a triangular plate, designed to honor the connection between the Jovian moon and our planet.
One of its sides has illustrations of the sound waves of the word “water” spoken in 103 languages by families around the world, and the other, a recording of the poem In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa, written by Ada Limón. It also has a microchip where more than 2.6 million names sent by participants in the Message in a Bottle campaign were recorded.
Don’t think it’s over: the plate contains the Drake Equation, a formula that estimates the number of alien civilizations in the Milky Way. The illustration on the inside will present a reference to radio frequencies that can be used for interstellar communication, showing how we use radio bands to try to find messages in space.
Finally, the plaque received a portrait of Ron Greeley, a professor who created the necessary basis for the Europa Clipper mission two decades ago. Thus, we can say that this “message in a bottle” that goes to Jupiter’s moon represents the richness and diversity of life on Earth, as was done with the golden discs sent on the Voyager probes.
“The plaque combines the best of what humanity has to offer across the universe — science, technology, education, art and mathematics. The message of connection through water, essential to all life forms as we know it, perfectly illustrates the Earth’s bond with this mysterious ocean world that we are proposing to explore,” said Lori Glaze, director of the Planetary Sciences Division at NASA.
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Source: NASA
