If your ex ever promised to take you to the Moon and never fulfilled it, now you have the opportunity to talk to them again to ask them to take you. It is not that they can take you to the Moon literally, but NASA can now do it. They have gotten a bit romantic and have opened an invitation for everyone to travel to the Moon. Not literally, of course, you are not an astronaut (we think), only your name will travel.
It will be part of the Artemis II mission, the mission that will take astronauts to orbit the satellite in 2026. It is not just any visit, it will be the first time in more than 50 years that human beings get close again to the lunar environment. And the agency wants millions of people to feel part of the trip, even in a symbolic way. And for that they have enabled a simple form to upload your name, which will travel in a memory card inside the Orion spacecraft. A way to thank the world for continuing to allow NASA to exist.
Why is NASA doing this?
Because it knows that space exploration no longer works only with science and epic. It needs people to get excited again like in 69 and also support the project.
Artemis II arrives in a complicated moment, enormous costs, delays, tense politics and a modern space race in which China pushes hard to be the one who returns to the Moon first (not to mention that Trump wanted to crush NASA…). So, besides technology, the mission needs narrative, emotion, something that makes people want to look up and say, ok, this matters to me, I want to participate. And sharing the trip, even with your name inside a microchip, is cool, do not say it is not.
How to participate (and what you get in return)
The process is very easy and done in seconds, you enter the website, put your name and some basic data, and in seconds a digital pass appears (like your boarding pass) with your name and a personal PIN code.
You can download that pass, save it, show it, print it or upload it to social media, let people know that you are going to the Moon!! However, NASA insists that you keep it well because, if you lose the PIN, there is no possible recovery.
Once collected, all the names will go inside the spacecraft that will circle the Moon and return to Earth. We do not know if anyone will ever read them, but they will be there, accompanying the trip.
Including humanity in its missions
Already in the 70s, when the Voyagers took off into deep space, they carried a golden record with sounds and images of Earth for whoever might find it (or do you not know that there are 63 ways to say hello on that record traveling through space?)
Then came other missions that included signatures, greetings and even millions of names engraved on microchips, and Artemis II does not repeat but updates the gesture.
The audience matters as much as the Moon
The Apollo program left an uncomfortable lesson, and that is that after the “giant leap for mankind”, many people stopped paying attention, and when interest drops, so does the budget, political support, ambition…
And now, in a context where each delay is a new headline, each expense is a debate and each advance competes against a geopolitical rival… They need collective emotion.
A bit of everyone up there
It will not land on the Moon, only circle it, check its systems, prepare the terrain for other missions and show that next time we can stay up there to travel to Mars from a shorter distance.
Sending names does not change the course of the spacecraft nor its main mission, but it makes millions of people feel that this story also belongs to them!
So… why does something so symbolic matter so much?
Because space exploration, in 2024, does not only compete with other countries, it competes with TikTok, with boredom, with “what is this for”. And do you know how beautiful it will be to tell your grandchildren that your name traveled to the Moon with Artemis II?
“We do not want you to only watch the mission. We want you to feel part of it.”
Even if you will never board a spacecraft, nor step on the Moon, nor know what it feels like to see the Earth floating in absolute black… Your name, however, can get a little closer.
A bit of emotion
Artemis II wants to write a new page of space exploration, and putting names in this mission is a way of inviting us to follow the feat. Have you prepared your boarding pass yet? We have!