You’re invited to sign your name to a poem written by the U.S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limón. The poem connects two water worlds — Earth, yearning to reach out and understand what makes a world habitable, and Europa, waiting with secrets yet to be explored.
ALTWell, at least your name can.
One of the planet Jupiter’s largest and most intriguing moons is called Europa. Evidence hints that beneath its icy shell, Europa hides an ocean of liquid water – more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. In 2024, our Europa Clipper robotic spacecraft sets sail to take a closer look…and when it launches, your name can physically be aboard! Here’s how:
NASA’s Message in a Bottle campaign invites people around the world to sign their names to a poem written by the U.S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limón. The poem connects the two water worlds — Earth, yearning to reach out and understand what makes a world habitable, and Europa, waiting with secrets yet to be explored.
ALTThe poem will be engraved on Europa Clipper, along with participants’ names that will be physically etched onto microchips mounted on the spacecraft. Together, the poem and names will travel 1.8 billion miles to the Jupiter system.
ALTSigning up is easy! Just go to this site to sign your name to the poem and get on board. You can send your name en español, too. Envía tu nombre aquí.
The Europa Clipper launch window opens in October 2024, but don’t wait – everyone’s names need to be received this year so they can be loaded onto the spacecraft in time. Sign up by Dec. 31, 2023.
We hope you’ll be riding along with us! Follow the mission at europa.nasa.gov.
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Did you know you are surrounded by NASA technology? From your apartment building to the doctor’s office, and even in your cellphone camera, there is more space in your life than you think!
In the latest edition of Spinoff, we are introducing dozens of new ways NASA technology could cross your path. Whether you need an extra “hand” on the production line or a weatherproof jacket, check out how to gear up with technology made for space.
Robots are crucial to exploring space and other planets – they could even support astronauts and form the advance party for places humans have yet to reach. But the human machine is hard to replicate.
A collaboration with General Motors helped us build Robonaut 2 – and the design for this robot’s hands has been adapted into a robotic glove that helps manufacturing employees, such as automobile workers, reduce injuries and improve quality control.
The Swedish company Bioservo used the Robo-Glove technology to create the world’s first industrial-strength robotic glove for factory workers who perform repetitive manual tasks.
The Ironhand glove adds force to the user’s grip with artificial tendons and pressure sensors on the palm and the fingers.
The result? Reduced strain on the user’s own tendons and muscles, meaning fewer workplace stress injuries and better comfort for workers.
ALTSpacesuits need major insulation and temperature control to protect astronauts on extravehicular activities, aka spacewalks. To help solve this, we created a phase-change material with help from the Triangle Research and Development Corporation.
With funding from a NASA Small Business Innovation Research contract, Triangle incorporated the material into a fabric glove insert that could maintain a steady temperature by absorbing and releasing heat, ensuring it feels just right.
While the invention never made it to orbit, it did make it into the driver’s seat.
Outlast Technologies exclusively licensed the material from Triangle and has incorporated it into outdoor gear, bedding, and now – auto racing suits with help from Cambridge, England-based Walero.
ALTDue to extreme temperatures in the cockpit, drivers in almost every major racing championship wear Walero for its cooling properties. Cristiana Oprea (pictured) wears it while driving for the European Rally Championship. Credit: Walero
The race undergarments, bonded with fire-retardant material for added protection, help drivers maintain a lower core temperature and heart rate, which means fewer mistakes and better lap times.
The suits have been sold to both amateur racers and professional NASCAR drivers.
ALTThe superinsulating material that makes up space blankets is one of our most ubiquitous spinoffs. Found everywhere from inside the walls and roofs of buildings to cryogenic tanks and MRI machines, radiant barrier technology was first created to insulate spacesuits and spacecraft. And now this NASA spinoff can be found in weatherproof jackets as well.
Inspired by her passion to run following a series of surgeries to help correct a life-threatening injury, Hema Nambiar launched her Larchmont, New York, start-up company 13-One. To create her jacket, she worked with Advanced Flexible Materials Inc.’s brand Heatsheets. The brand was already marketing products like the space blankets traditionally distributed after races to prevent dangerous drops in temperature.
ALTThe 13-One jackets are designed to be warm and weatherproof, but their thin, reflective lining lets them also be lightweight and easily portable. Credit: Lourenso Ramautar, Out of New York Studio
The resulting line of jackets has a black exterior and a lining to reflect body heat. They weigh less than a pound, are wind- and water-resistant, and easily pack into a small, built-in pouch.
Want to check out more NASA spinoffs? Be sure to find us on spinoff.nasa.gov and on Twitter.
Interested in licensing your own NASA technologies? Check out the NASA Technology Transfer program at technology.nasa.gov.
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We’re set to launch the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on July 30. The rover is loaded with scientific instruments and advanced technology, making it the largest, heaviest and most sophisticated vehicle ever sent to the Red Planet.
What is Perseverance’s mission and what will it do on Mars? Here are seven things to know:
Not only does it have to launch during a pandemic and land on a treacherous planet, it has to carry out its science goals:
We chose the name Perseverance from among the 28,000 essays submitted during the “Name the Rover” contest. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the months leading up to the launch in particular have required creative problem solving, teamwork and determination.
In 1997, our first Mars rover – Sojourner – showed that a robot could rove on the Red Planet. Spirit and Opportunity, which both landed in 2004, found evidence that Mars once had water before becoming a frozen desert.
Curiosity found evidence that Mars’ Gale Crater was home to a lake billions of years ago and that there was an environment that may have sustained microbial life. Perseverance aims to answer the age-old question – are there any signs that life once existed on Mars?
The rover will land in Jezero Crater, a 28-mile wide basin north of the Martian equator. A space rock hit the surface long ago, creating the large hole. Between 3 and 4 billion years ago, a river flowed into a body of water in Jezero the size of Lake Tahoe.
Mars orbiters have collected images and other data about Jezero Crater from about 200 miles above, but finding signs of past life will need much closer inspection. A rover like Perseverance can look for those signs that may be related to ancient life and analyze the context in which they were found to see if the origins were biological.
This is the first rover to bring a sample-gathering system to Mars that will package promising samples of rocks and other materials for future return to Earth. NASA and ESA are working on the Mars Sample Return campaign, so we can analyze the rocks and sediment with tools too large and complex to send to space.
Two packages – one that helps the rover autonomously avoid hazards during landing (TRN) and another that gathers crucial data during the trip through Mars’ atmosphere (MEDLI2) – will help future human missions land safely and with larger payloads on other worlds.
There are two instruments that will specifically help astronauts on the Red Planet. One (MEDA) will provide key information about the planet’s weather, climate and dust activity, while a technology demonstration (MOXIE) aims to extract oxygen from Mars’ mostly carbon-dioxide atmosphere.
Perseverance and other parts of the Mars 2020 spacecraft feature 23 cameras, which is more than any other interplanetary mission in history. Raw images from the camera are set to be released on the mission website.
There are also three silicon chips with the names of nearly 11 million people who signed up to send their names to Mars.
And you can continue to follow the mission on Twitter and Facebook.
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