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Can’t set foot on Mars? Your name can get there first

SINGAPORE — For those who are constantly gazing at stars and celestial objects or dreaming of travelling to space, it will now be possible for you to get “involved” in a mission to Mars.

Members of the public who want to send their name to Mars on Nasa's next rover mission to the Red Planet can get a souvenir boarding pass and their names etched on microchips to be affixed to the rover.

Members of the public who want to send their name to Mars on Nasa's next rover mission to the Red Planet can get a souvenir boarding pass and their names etched on microchips to be affixed to the rover.

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SINGAPORE — For those who are constantly gazing at stars and celestial objects or dreaming of travelling to space, it will now be possible for you to get “involved” in a mission to Mars.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) is now offering people a chance to have their names sent to the Red Planet via the American space agency’s Mars 2020 rover.

Just complete and submit an online form on its website and you may get to print or save a souvenir “boarding pass”, which also shows “frequent-flyer” points.

Nasa said in a press release on Wednesday (May 22) that the rover is scheduled to launch as early as July 2020, with the spacecraft expected to touch down on Mars in February 2021.

Those keen to submit their names will have until Sept 30 this year to do so.

Once the name is submitted and approved, the Microdevices Laboratory at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will stencil it onto a silicon chip with an electron beam.

Each line of text will be 75 nanometres wide, smaller than a thousandth the thickness of a human hair.

At this size, more than a million names can be written on a single dime-size chip.

“The chip (or chips) will ride on the rover under a glass cover,” the agency said.

While it is still too early for humans to land on Mars, Nasa said that its rover will help to pave the way for human exploration of the planet.

Weighing more than 1,000kg, the rover will search for signs of past microbial life, characterise the planet's climate and geology, and collect samples.

In a write-up on the Mars 2020 Mission on its website, Nasa said that the rover will have a drill to collect core samples of the most promising rocks and soils and set them aside in a "cache" on the surface of Mars. A future mission could potentially return these samples to Earth.

The launch date is set for July 2020 when Earth and Mars are “in good positions relative to each other for landing on Mars”.

This means that it takes less power to travel to Mars at this time, compared to other times when Earth and Mars are in different positions in their orbits.

Mr Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for Nasa's science mission directorate in Washington, said: "As we get ready to launch this historic Mars mission, we want everyone to share in this journey of exploration."

Mars 2020 will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, United States.

Last year, more than two million names flew on Nasa's InSight mission to Mars, giving each "flyer" about 300 million frequent flyer miles (nearly 500 million frequent flyer km).

The Insight probe, which is not a rover and thus cannot move across surfaces, was sent to study Mars’ interior — its crust, mantle and core.

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