The United States' government agency the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have been trying hard to find traces of life on Mars for many years. It is still unknown if human life on this planet is an option.
But, even if you can't go to Mars yourself, your name can!
NASA's InSight Mission craft, which has recently landed on Mars, has 2.4 million names on board from all over the world.
Three of those names come from Anand - a small town in the Gujarat state in India.
The names of Arjunbhai Shah, his wife Lata Shah and daughter Ekta Shah's made the journey to Mars under the InSight Mission project.
Ekta, who is a PhD student in Astrophysics at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, told SBS Gujarati that NASA started a registration process with all the names of anyone wishing to send their name to Mars.
Source: Ekta Shah
"Anyone can register their details on the NASA's website under the given link. I have submitted my details and those of my parents and had our names printed on the chip which was carried by the InSight Mission.
"In return, every space enthusiast who has sent their names, got a downloadable boarding pass for the memory."
"And, it gives us the actual feeling that we are actually travelling to Mars,” said Ekta.
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2.4 million names landed on Mars
According to the latest data released by the NASA, 24, 29,807 people from all around the world have registered their names for the program. The United States is first on the list with 676,773 registrations while China takes second place with 262,752, followed by India with 138,899 people sending their names to NASA.
Dime size microchip carried all the names
According to the Mars InSight mission, the dime-size microchip (23 millimetres approximately) installed 800,000 names on the first chip which was joined by another 1.6 million names on the second chip in January 2018 with the grand total of 2.4 million names that ended up going to Mars.
The names were etched on a wafer-thin microchip using electron beams to form letters with lines on one-thousandth of the diameter of a human hair. The chip was then attached to the top hull of the lander.
Source: Milind Siddhpura
The InSight Mission was launched in early May 2018 and landed successfully in November 2018.
