"Send Your Name to Mars": Thanks to a new NASA campaign, anyone can send their name to the red planet

NASA has launched the Send Your Name to Mars campaign to promote a future crewed mission to the Red Planet. The names of registrants (here) and the selection of expedition participants will be recorded on a microchip and sent to Mars together with the future expedition. NASA sincerely warns that the participants of the campaign will not get any rights to the given part of Mars.

NASA has already done a campaign of the same name and a similar one in the past, which managed to register 10,932,295 participants from all over the world. Their names, along with 155 essays selected from NASA's Name the Rover contest, were laser-etched onto three silicon chips the size of a fingernail and attached to the Perseverance rover. So far, the rover, with those chips attached to it, has spent 936 Earth days in the Jezero crater, where it is looking for traces of water and signs of life.

NASA is repeating the Send Your Name to Mars program after many requests from people who missed the opportunity to send their names to Mars. Now, on the registration page of this expedition, you can enter your name, which along with other names will go to Mars in the next few years.

NASA assures that “your name will be on the next NASA mission to Mars in the mid-2020s. The spacecraft has not yet been decided, but we are currently collecting names that will eventually be placed on the spacecraft bound for Mars."

The application will go through an approval process. Automatic filters are used during registration that immediately block unapproved words or phrases and display the message "Flight prohibited". Furthermore, the names will be further verified by the agency itself before making a final decision.

To promote space exploration and engage the public, NASA has previously launched other programs, such as the Message in a Bottle program for the Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter, scheduled for 2024. Another such initiative was in 2022, when names were sent to the Moon by the Artemis 1 spacecraft.