Humans do science in space. And the universe is full of art. Well, NASA is combining science and art in its newest spacecraft. In 2024, Europa Clipper will fly to Jupiter. The craft will carry a poem. And you can add your name!
Europa Clipper is set to take off in 2024. The spacecraft should arrive at Jupiter by 2030. It will fly around the gas giant planet. And it will look closely at Jupiter’s moon Europa. The craft will study the moon’s and its ice crust. It will look for an ocean.
The goal isn’t just to study the of Europa. It’s to look for places that could support life! So, the craft will study the ocean. It will try to learn what it’s made of. That might show whether life could be there!
Ada Limón is the U.S. poet laureate. That’s the poet of the United States. Limón wrote a poem about this mission. A chip on Europa Clipper will carry her poem.
People can sign the poem online. Then, their names will go on the microchip too! The sign-up site is go.nasa.gov/messageinabottle. The deadline is December 31. Nicola Fox works at NASA. He called this the “ of science, art, and technology.”
Here is Ada Limón’s poem:
In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa
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.
Updated June 14, 2023, 5:01 P.M. (ET)
By Russell Kahn (Russ)
