As NASA plans to send a new satellite around Jupiter, a message addressed to extraterrestrial life forms that could be there will be sent.
The discovery of extraterrestrial life forms is a goal that drives many scientists. And the American space agency, NASA, continues, during its research and exploration missions, to look for traces of other forms of life beyond Earth.
If the Moon and Mars seem to be the main objects of study by space agencies, the other planets are also the subject of research. The planet Jupiter, in particular, is at the heart of one of NASA’s next missions. The Europa Clipper mission should launch from Earth on October 10, 2024 towards one of Jupiter’s moons. The satellite is expected to arrive in orbit around the moon Europa in 2030, after a journey of 2.6 billion kilometers.
The particularity of this moon is that it is covered by a layer of ice which hides numerous environments beneath its surface, including an ocean. The main goal of the Europa mission is to “understand the nature of the ice sheet and the ocean beneath it as well as the geology and composition of the moon” as stated on the Europa mission website. NASA. The agency adds that the objective is also to assess the habitable potential of Europa.
As part of the search for other forms of life, this mission will have a very specific element. In 2023, NASA launched a project called “Message in a Bottle” aimed at people around the world. The principle: send your first name to NASA so that it can be included on the mission vessel. In total, the agency collected 2.6 million names, all of which were engraved alongside a poem entitled “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa” written by American poet Ada Limón. Here it is in full, in English:
“Arching under the night sky inky with black expansiveness, we point to the planets we know, we; pin quick wishes on stars. From earth, we read the sky as if it is an unerring book of the universe, expert and evident. ; Still, there are mysteries below our sky: the whale song, the songbird singing its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree. We are creatures of constant awe, curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom, at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.
And it is not darkness that unites us, not the cold distance of space, but the offering of water, each drop of rain, each rivulet, each pulse, each vein. O second moon, we, too, are made of water, of vast and beckoning seas. We, too, are made of wonders, of great and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds, of a need to call out through the dark.”
Difficult to translate it into French, but it would read: “Under the black ink night sky, we point to the planets we know, we pin the stars to make wishes. From Earth, we read the sky as if it it was an infallible book of the universe, expert and obvious; Yet there are mysteries under our sky: the song of the whale, the songbird that sings its call in the antlers of a shaken tree by the wind. We are creatures of constant wonder, curious about beauty, leaves and flowers, sorrow and pleasure, sun and shade.
And it is not the darkness that unites us, nor the cold distance of space, but the offering of water, every drop of rain, every stream, every pulse, every vein. O second moon, we too are made of water, of vast and alluring seas. We too are made of wonders, of loves great and ordinary, of small invisible worlds, of a need to call through the darkness.”
NASA also engraved the word “water” in 103 languages on the metal plate built into the spacecraft. This word was chosen for the link it represents between the two planets. On this plate, the words appear not in written form but in the form of waves which corresponds to the visual representation of its pronunciation. In addition to the messages entered, NASA plans to add the Drake equation. Named after its inventor, American astronomer Frank Drake, this formula created in 1961 aims to estimate the possibility of discovering advanced extraterrestrial civilizations.