This is a neat thing I just read about: you can send your name to Mars! Submit your name on the NASA site and it will be included with others on a microchip on the Mars Science Laboratory rover. Hurry, you only have until Monday to add your name–do it here.
(What happened to picking cool names for the rovers, like Sojourner, Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity? This one’s just the “Mars Science Laboratory”? Did I miss a contest somewhere?)
(And wouldn’t naming space program stuff be the best job ever?)
Aww, cheesy space surprises are the BEST! I will keep it secret. 🙂
PS Don’t mention the shuttle flight thing on my blog or Facebook, please… Anne doesn’t know about it. It’s a cheesy space surprise! 😉
There are actually plenty of prosaically (read: boringly) named space probes in the Martian area… Mars Climate Orbiter; Mars Polar Lander; Mars Reconaissance Orbiter; Mars Global Surveyor. The rovers with the sexy names are kind of the exception to the rule… 🙂
Great tip with “send your name to Mars,” by the way. NASA has done that with several missions. Anne and I are on our way to Pluto with the New Horizons probe, and we’ve got our names on the last shuttle flight, too. (That one allows you to send a photo, too. The website is here: https://faceinspace.nasa.gov/)