Every NASA mission is poetic in its own right as they aim to unravel the deep secrets of the universe. From landing the first man on the moon to capturing snapshots of distant galaxies - deep diving into space is truly a poetic endeavor.
However, NASA's upcoming Europa Clipper mission, which will find signs of life in Jupiter's moons, will literally have a "poetic" flight.
Poetry Meets Space
Art meets science and poetry meet space as US Poet Laureate Ada Limón writes her heart out for a new poem dedicated to the Europa Clipper mission.
The Europa Clipper spacecraft will be inscribed with her poetry, which will be published in the upcoming months, as per NASA's press release on Monday, Jan. 30.
It will be a part of a future NASA-led mission that will invite public engagement worldwide and travel 1.8 billion miles on its way to the Jupiter system.
In October 2024, the spacecraft is scheduled to launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, and by 2030, it will be orbiting the gas giant.
Europa, the icy moon of Jupiter, will be the target of numerous flybys by this spacecraft in order to collect data and assess whether or not life may exist there.
One of the most promising habitable habitats in our solar system, beyond Earth, is Europa, which is predicted to have a large interior ocean.
Europa is believed to contain an iron core and a rocky mantle, just like our planet. Strong evidence supporting the existence of an ocean of salt water hidden beneath Europa's frozen shells was acquired by the Galileo mission in the late 1990s. If this is validated, the ocean might contain more water than the entire surface of the planet.
According to scientists, this water is in contact with the moon's stony interior, which could enable a variety of intriguing chemical reactions. Hence, astrobiologists believe that Europa is one of the distant worlds out there that could support life.
The Poet Among the Stars
In 2022, Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, named Limón the 24th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. She is of Mexican origin and was born in 1976 in Sonoma, California.
Her poetry volumes include "The Hurting Kind;" "The Carrying," which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Her "Bright Dead Things" was also a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Books Critics Circle Award.
This spring, more details about Limón's new work and how the public can participate will be made available. The project is a unique partnership between NASA, the US Poet Laureate, and the Library of Congress that fuses art and science.
Europa Clipper is being built at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, and the process is streamed live 24/7.
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