Subscribe Today, Send Your Name to the Moon

Since most of us will probably never fly into space, NASA will provide you with the next best thing. A chance to send your name into space and have it spinning around that big chunk of rock orbiting Earth, we call the Moon. Until June 27, 2008 anyone willing to subscribe in the 'Name to the Moon' program can access the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter website and enter their name. The information you have provided will be automatically saved into a database and incorporated into a chip that will be placed on board the LRO.

To make matters a little more fun, NASA will also provide you with a certificate (see bottom image) guaranteeing that your name has been registered amongst those of another couple of millions of people.

In the last year or so, ever more nations expressed the will to send a manned mission back to the Moon and the situation is no different when it comes to the United States. But first, as it was in the case of the first manned mission to the Moon, the landing sites and resources available on the lunar surface must be studied, as well as the dangers related to the effects of lunar radiation on the human body. And what better way to do this than with an orbiter?

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is set to launch into space somewhere around the month of November and will have a mission stretching over a whole year. Sending items and names into space may look like a rather innovative idea, but the concept is far from new.

NASA has previously sent other items and science projects into space for a short period of time, only to return them back to their owners. The Phoenix lander for example, carries the names of the people participating in the mission, while JAXA's Selene spacecraft orbiting around the Moon is also carrying names of various people on a microchip.

So far, more than 1.2 million people have subscribed for NASA 'Name to the Moon' program and the number is still growing. As Neal Jones of the Goddard Space Flight Center said, the project has gone international. There are three more weeks still in which time you can add your own name to the database that will be sent to the Moon along with the LRO.