Categories: AsteroidsMissionsNASASolar SystemSpace ExplorationSpace Exploration Technologies

Here’s Your Chance To Send A Message To An Asteroid

NASA is planning to launch a time capsule aboard the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft, which is expected to head to an asteroid in 2016. Credit: Heather Roper/University of Arizona/OSIRIS-REx

What’s your vision for solar system exploration? And how cool would it be to send it literally into the solar system?

NASA is offering its fans the chance to compose a tweet or send a picture showing how we can step out into the cosmos. The best ones among these will be placed aboard a spacecraft that will zoom to an asteroid in 2016.

The “time capsule” will be placed aboard the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx). If all goes to plan, it will meet with the asteroid Bennu in 2019, pick up a sample and then return it to Earth in 2023.

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And by the way, you can also send your name to Bennu via this form (a joint initiative of NASA and the Planetary Society.) Seems a good chance to get your name off of Earth, until the time when space travel becomes affordable to ordinary citizens.

For more details about the tweets and images time capsule, visit this NASA website. Make sure to submit your message before Sept. 30.

Source: NASA

Elizabeth Howell

Elizabeth Howell is the senior writer at Universe Today. She also works for Space.com, Space Exploration Network, the NASA Lunar Science Institute, NASA Astrobiology Magazine and LiveScience, among others. Career highlights include watching three shuttle launches, and going on a two-week simulated Mars expedition in rural Utah. You can follow her on Twitter @howellspace or contact her at her website.