A space for all: Adventures beyond the planet are now open to all, even if it’s a name on a microchip

Your wish to fly around the moon may not be possible anytime soon, but chances are that your name can be flashed on the most awaited moon mission. Instead of people on board, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has invited names of people for the Artemis I mission.

How do you enroll? It’s a simple process. Click on the NASA website link (https://www.nasa.gov/send-your-name-with-artemis/), enter your name and a custom pin to generate a boarding pass. The pass is important for access in the future as it is your ticket to ride with information such as launch site (which is the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida), launch vehicle type (Space Launch System or SLS), rocket type (Orion) and destination (Lunar Orbit).

The Artemis I will be the first uncrewed flight test of an SLS rocket and the names will be launched on an Orion capsule that will travel around the moon. The journey dates are yet to be confirmed but NASA is eyeing end of May or starting June for a possible launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

However, this is not the first time when NASA has opted for flashing names on a mission. For its Mars rover mission, over 11 million names along with the Perseverance rover had taken off inside Jezero Crater, on February 18, 2021. The ‘Send Your Name to Mars’ campaign invited people around the globe to submit their names, which were etched on three fingernail-sized chips on board the Perseverance rover.

How did it work? NASA’s Laboratory used an electron beam machine which could etch features as less than 1 micron.
The launch of the Artemis I will be a historic moment for NASA and the first in a series of increasingly complex missions to build a long-term human presence at the moon for decades to come. Additionally, there’s incredible excitement for the Artemis programme that will land the first person of colour on the moon and the first woman and the next man on the lunar South Pole by 2024.

Previous space missions have also seen a diverse next-generation of explorers in gender and ethnicity. There was a time when the only people who touched the moon’s surface in 1972 were white men. Gradually, this changed over the years.
Guion Bluford became NASA’s first African-American astronaut to fly in space on the STS-8 mission in 1983, the first of his four spaceflights. Among a long list of women who have travelled to space is Mae C Jemison. On the STS-47 mission of the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992, she became the first African-American female in space. The first woman in space was Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova who flew on Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963; the first American woman in space, Sally Ride, flew aboard the Space Shuttle STS-7 in June of 1983. Other notable firsts: Roscosmos cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya participated in a spacewalk in July, 1984; NASA astronaut Susan Helms was the first female crew member aboard the space station, a member of Expedition 2 from March to August 2001. The 2013 astronaut class was the first with equal numbers of women and men. Kalpana Chawla also became the first woman of Indian origin in 1997 to travel in space as the mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator aboard the US space shuttle Columbia. In December 2006, Sunita Williams became the second woman of Indian origin to venture into space on a 12-day repair mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

But the 2024 Artemis III mission will be humanity’s return to the surface of the moon. After launching on SLS, the astronauts will travel about 240,000 miles to lunar orbit aboard Orion, at which point they will directly board one of the new commercial human landing systems, or dock to the Gateway to inspect it and gather supplies before boarding the landing system for their expedition to the surface, states the agency website.

What’s important here is that Artemis moonwalkers will wear revolutionary spacesuits that stand up to the Moon’s harsh environment and keep them safe. Spacesuits include life support, pressure garments, informatics, and avionics, tools and equipment, vehicle interfaces, flight and ground support hardware.