In past NASA missions to the outer planets of our solar system, we attached messages for any distant civilization that might be out there. Both the Pioneer and Voyager missions contained such messages.
So what about NASA’s Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter’s moon set to launch in October? It too will have some messages, but these appear to be for the inhabitants of the moon rather than some distant civilization.
A triangular 7″ x 11″ metal plate attached to the spacecraft destined for Europa will carry messages on both sides. The image above shows one of these sides containing features waveforms that are visual representations of the sound waves formed by the word “water” in 103 languages.
The other side of the plate (shown below) contains a variety of messages:
- the Drake Equation, which estimate the possibility of finding advanced civilizations beyond Earth;
- U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s handwritten “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa”;
- a reference to the radio frequencies considered plausible for interstellar communication; and
- a portrait Ron Greeley, whose early efforts laid the foundation for Europa Clipper.
The spacecraft will also carry a silicon microchip containing more than 2.6 million names that were submitted by the public as part of NASA’s “Message in a Bottle” campaign.
This is all interesting in itself, but not really a message to others. I expect it is not intended for anyone else but ourselves because the Europa Clipper is not expected to leave the solar system but instead crash into another of Jupiter’s moons – Ganymede.
Note: You may wonder about the message on the New Horizons spacecraft that is also travelling to the edges of our solar system. That message is somewhat controversial. I will let you read about that one in this Slate article, “Ashes and Small Change.”
Our Awesome Universe 