Send Your Name to the Moon!

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla

2008/05/02 06:46 CDT

Topics:

We're doing it again -- helping to gather people's names for flight to another place in the solar system. This time it's to a nearby destination, the Moon, aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is scheduled to launch this fall. Go here to read about it and add your name! You have until June 27, 2008 to get on the spacecraft.

If you're a member of The Planetary Society, your name will automatically be flown on the orbiter, though I don't think our member list has been entered into the database on the mission website. In any case, even if you are a member, you should go to the site to add your spouse's, kids', parents', and pets' names. We've flown our members' names on many other missions: Cassini-Huygens, Hayabusa, Spirit and Opportunity, Kaguya, and Phoenix, just to name a few. So if you've been a longtime member, your name is scrawled all over the solar system -- in orbit at Saturn, sitting on the surfaces of Mars and Itokawa, and orbiting the Moon. (Sadly, your name is also on the bottom of the ocean with Cosmos-1 and Mars '96, but we don't like to talk about that much.)