Send Your Names to an Asteroid, NASA Says

NASA invites earthlings to participate in some cosmic fun. The agency has asked space enthusiasts to submit their names for the OSIRIS-Rex mission, which is due to make its way to the asteroid Bennu in 2016 for a two-year mission.  

 In a latest announcement, NASA invited the public to submit their names that will be engraved on a microchip aboard a spacecraft that will head to the 1,760-foot-wide asteroid. The spacecraft will be sent to the asteroid where it will collect about two ounces of surface material and return with it to Earth in a sample-return capsule in 2023. All space enthusiasts who want to be a part of this cosmic fun should submit their names online before September 30 at 'Message to Bennu.'

What's exciting is that your name not just stays up there for 500 days but will remain in space even after the spacecraft returns the capsule to Earth.  Those who have submitted their names can download and print a certificate documenting their participation in the OSIRIS-REx mission.

"You'll be part of humankind's exploration of the solar system --How cool is that?" said Bill Nye, chief executive officer of The Planetary Society, the organization collecting and processing the entries.

 Participants who have registered their names and who 'follow' or 'like' the asteroid mission on Facebook and Twitter will get notifications on the status of their name in space from the time it is launched and until the samples are returned to Earth in 2013.

The aim of the OSIRIS-Rex mission is to address the basic questions on the composition of the early solar system.  With this mission, the scientists want gain a proper insight into the orbit of asteroid that signify collision threat with the blue planet. Once the samples return to the Earth, the spacecraft will be placed into a long term solar orbit around the sun, along with the microchip on which the names are engraved.

"It is exciting to consider the possibility that some of the people who register to send their names to Bennu could one day be a part of the team that analyzes the samples from the asteroid 10 years from now," said Jason Dworkin, mission project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.