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MONTHLY NEWS February 1998 Sending Your Name to Mars |
Anyone who's ever dreamed of traveling to other planets can now do perhaps the next best thing: have an inscription of your name make the journey for you.
Japan's first satellite to Mars will carry metal plates engraved with names people send in on a postcard. The satellite, Planet B, is being launched this summer by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) of the Japanese Ministry of Education.
ISAS will print all the names it receives on two aluminum squares measuring 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) on a side that'll be carried aboard Planet B. ISAS hopes this idea will boost people's interest in Japan's space program. The Cassini spacecraft to Saturn that was launched in October by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States also carried a list of people's names into the solar system--on a digital video disk (DVD). The disk aboard Cassini contains 610,000 names sent in by people from roughly 80 countries. Planet B will be launched by an M-5 rocket, developed in Japan. It will reach Mars in 1999 and enter into orbit around the red planet, examining the Martian atmosphere and magnetic fields and relaying the information back to Earth. It will focus on the effects of solar wind on the formation of the atmosphere and record images of the planet's weather. You can have your name carried aboard Planet B by sending in a postcard with one person's name each written in a rectangular box measuring 2 centimeters (3/4 inches) high and 6 centimeters (2 1/3 inches) wide. The postcard may contain as many names as it can hold. It should be mailed with a postmark no later than February 28 to the Public Relations Section, Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, 3-1-1 Yoshinodai, Sagamihara-shi, Kanagawa, 229-0022 JAPAN.
Image: Planet B flies in orbit around Mars. (The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Ministry of Education) 
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