This is your final chance to use NASA’s Europa Clipper to transmit your name to one of Jupiter’s moons.

This weekend is the deadline for submitting names to NASA for a “message in a bottle” that will be part of the space agency’s planned Europa Clipper mission. If you were hoping to be included but haven’t yet, you best get on it.

The signatures will go with a poem that US Poet Laureate Ada Limón wrote especially for Europa. The poem will be inscribed in Limón’s handwriting on a metal plate that will be fastened to the spaceship. Under its frozen surface, Europa, one of Jupiter’s biggest moons, is believed to have a deep saltwater ocean where the circumstances may be favorable for microbial life.

All you have to do to participate in the Message in a Bottle initiative is visit NASA’s website and complete a brief registration form. The deadline is December 31, which is tomorrow. Over 2.4 million individuals have added their names thus far. According to NASA, using an electron beam that can produce text lines smaller than 1/1000th the diameter of a human hair, the names of all participants will be inscribed in minuscule characters onto microchips. The plate with the poem on it will have these microchips attached to it.

After launching in October 2024, the Europa Clipper spacecraft will take another six years to enter Jupiter’s orbit. Once there, it will conduct many near flybys to examine Europa’s possible habitability. Europa is one of the longest known moons to humans and one of an estimated 95 moons orbiting Jupiter.

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