Send Your Name to the Moon With New Lunar Mission


From the NASA Press release:

WASHINGTON -- NASA invites people of all ages to join the lunar exploration journey with an opportunity to send their names to the moon aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, spacecraft.

The Send Your Name to the Moon Web site enables everyone to participate in the lunar adventure and place their names in orbit around the moon for years to come. Participants can submit their information at http://www.nasa.gov/lro, print a certificate and have their name entered into a database. The database will be placed on a microchip that will be integrated onto the spacecraft. The deadline for submitting names is June 27, 2008.

"Everyone who sends their name to the moon, like I'm doing, becomes part of the next wave of lunar explorers," said Cathy Peddie, deputy project manager for LRO at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The LRO mission is the first step in NASA's plans to return humans to the moon by 2020, and your name can reach there first. How cool is that?"

The orbiter, comprised of six instruments and one technology demonstration, will provide the most comprehensive data set ever returned from the moon. The mission will focus on the selection of safe landing sites and identification of lunar resources. It also will study how the lunar radiation environment could affect humans.

LRO will also create a comprehensive atlas of the moon's features and resources that will be needed as NASA designs and builds a planned lunar outpost. The mission will support future human exploration while providing a foundation for upcoming science missions. LRO is scheduled for launch in late 2008.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is being built at Goddard. The mission also will be managed at the center for NASA's Explorations Systems Mission Directorate in Washington.

Send Your Name to the Moon is a collaborative effort among NASA, the Planetary Society in Pasadena, Calif., and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.

To send your name to the moon, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/lro

I did it and saw a fairly high certificate number and thought to myself, 01101001, this name-collecting must have been going on for some time. Have you perhaps done this previously, earlier in the effort?

And I answered myself, 01101001, let me check my records; indeed I have, under the auspices of the Planetary Society, with a web link no longer operative except for more general mailing list sign-up (namely, Messages from Earth).

So, I guess I'm good and signed up for LRO.

So don't bother to enlist again (or check you records -- you do keep records, don't you?), if you're the type like me who notices and acts upon these things early. Or, sign up twice. Can't hurt.

This news item is the last-chance exhortation, quick-before-it's-too-late-type thing.

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I've always wanted to go to the moon... and now I am going... kinda.

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I'm going to Pluto!

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Actually, your going to zip past Pluto and head for the stars, way cooler.

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ifi wanted my name on the moon, i'd just build a huge laser on the earth and just carve my name into the moon with that..
of course, some super hero do-gooder would probably stop me half way thru, and the letters "DER" would be carved into the moon..


ok.. hands up.. who gets that reference?

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Sir, may I eligible to quote my name on moon!!

Sunil (because I like moon)

Infact this a great Idea, to place the names of the many personalities worldwide "their names" on the moon, and whenever anyone who will visit to moon, he will get lot of amusement by looking their friends names there, they will automatically recharge themselves by looking these names on the moon during their soujourn.

Really The Nasa Team has brought the great and very innovative Idea, congratulation of them.

I think you're referencing the episode from "The Tick," when Chairhead Chippendale tried to carve his name into the moon, but The Tick stopped him after the first three letters "CHA." Right?

Edit: I mean Chairface Chippendale.... Spoon!

Wow my name will be going to the Navada Desert

Ducks and runs

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Van Rijn's original Invisible Elf was running for the North Carolina Senate, but dropped out of the contest after the paparazzi snapped him with a cute pixie just outside Disney World in Florida. Now he has settled down with her as they await their first child, writing his biography of life in Van Rijn's backyard, - Now you prove me wrong

that would be the one. later on- i can't remember how or by who- the moon got blown in half but the letters were still visible..

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On an earlier probe (Cassini, perhaps?), they collected post cards with signatures that were scanned and placed on a DVD. While sending my name to the moon is cool, having my signature circling Mars or Saturn is much cooler, IMHO.

I'm sure that several things came in to play when choosing to go to an all-electronic submission, including cost, effort, and the instant gratification of an electronic submission.

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I can probably list a whole lot of other things that would amuse me more than that. I'm sure the list would be big enough that I'd never get to the names.

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