“It shouldn’t be darkness that unites us, not the cold distance of space, however the offering of water…”
Those words, written by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón, are a part of an ode that may fly on a robotic probe to a distant icy moon. Now, with the poem’s reveal, the Library of Congress is inviting the general public so as to add their names to Limón’s tribute, like a message in a bottle from Earth to the Jupiter moon Europa.
Names submitted to the “Message in a Bottle” website before the tip of the yr will likely be stenciled onto a microchip to accompany Limón’s verse, which she titled “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa.”
Related: Behold! Our closest view of Jupiter’s ocean moon Europa in 22 years
“Writing this poem was one in every of the best honors of my life, but additionally some of the difficult tasks I’ve ever been assigned,” Limón said in a press release released by the Library of Congress. “Eventually, what made the poem come together was realizing that in pointing toward other planets, stars and moons, we’re also recognizing the big gift that’s our planet Earth. To point outward can be to point inward.”
The space-bound poem was first shared publicly on Thursday (June 1) during a special reading on the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.. NASA’s Europa Clipper is targeted to launch in October 2024 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a 1.8-billion-mile (2.6-billion-kilometer) journey to the smallest of Jupiter’s Galilean moons.
Arriving in 2030, the spacecraft will orbit Jupiter and fly by Europa about 50 times because it gathers data on the moon’s subsurface ocean, ice crust and atmosphere. The mission will investigate whether the conditions on Europa can support life.
“O second moon, we, too, are fabricated from water, of vast and beckoning seas. We, too, are fabricated from wonders, of great and abnormal loves, of small invisible worlds, of a have to call out through the dark,” reads Limón’s poem.
“In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa” will likely be engraved — within the Poet Laureate’s own handwriting — on the inward-facing side of a tantalum metal plate. The triangular piece will then be mounted on the side of the Europa Clipper spacecraft, where it is going to function a seal to an aluminum-zinc alloy vault shielding the spacecraft’s radiation-sensitive electronics.
A collaboration between Limón and the Library of Congress, the “Message in a Bottle” campaign is comparable to other NASA projects which have enabled tens of tens of millions people to send their names on flights to the moon, Mars and beyond. The flight of the poem also continues a practice of sending inspirational messages on interplanetary probes, equivalent to the Pioneer plaques and the “Golden Records” on the 2 Voyagers, which were engraved with images meant to speak that life existed back on Earth.
“Sending a poem into space on a mission to explore our solar system is an incredible opportunity for us all,” said Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress. “Ada Limón is an excellent poet whose work often connects readers with the natural world, so her ‘Poem for Europa’ is powerful in communicating our human instincts for art, science and exploration.”
Prior to writing “In Praise of Mystery,” Limón visited the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, to see Europa Clipper and learn more concerning the mission from those that will operate the probe. Limón was recently reappointed to serve a two-year second term as U.S. Poet Laureate through April 2025.
Limón shouldn’t be the primary Poet Laureate to be inspired by a NASA mission and even the primary to send an original composition into space.
Howard Nemerov, during his second term in service to the Librarian of Congress (1988-1990), wrote a poem upon “Witnessing the Launch of the Shuttle Atlantis,” and 4 Poet Laureates — Billy Collins (2001 2003), Rita Dove (1993 1995), Juan Felipe Herrera (2015 2017) and Charles Simic (2007 2008) — contributed messages to the plaque that launched with NASA’s Lucy spacecraft in 2021 on a mission to multiple asteroids.