….from the NASA website
Water connects Earth and Europa, the two ocean worlds NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft travels between on its journey. The existence of a vast ocean on a moon of Jupiter – which the Europa Clipper mission is equipped to decisively confirm and characterize – is what makes Europa such a promising place to better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond Earth.
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.
The poem is engraved on NASA’s robotic Europa Clipper spacecraft, along with participants’ names that will be etched onto microchips mounted on the spacecraft. Together, the poem and names will travel 1.8 billion miles on Europa Clipper’s voyage to the Jupiter system. Europa Clipper is set to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in October 2024, and by 2030, it will be in orbit around Jupiter.
Learn more about the program by visiting the NASA webpages here…
In addition to participating in the mission, there are plenty of other activities suggested to learn more about Europa and the mission including:
- writing space poetry (Teachers, check out this resource page to make it a lesson for your classroom)
- colouring pages (there is also a texture activity that could be used for an art class)
- models, stickers and posters
- information about the Europa Clipper spacecraft
- information about Europa