– A metallic plate about the size of a printer paper is attached to NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft which recently launched on a mission to study Jupiter’s moon Europa.
– The plate is engraved with a poem by US Poet Laureate Ada Limón reflecting on gazing at planetary wonders in the night sky.
– A replica of this plate sits at a museum in California, highlighting the blurred lines between art and science.
– While astronomy aims to gain knowledge, it also evokes profound feelings in exploring the vast, incomprehensible scales of the cosmos. In this way, it has overlaps with how art expresses the ineffable.
– The plate on the spacecraft carries additional engravings – Frank Drake’s Drake Equation, a sketch of planetary scientist Ron Greeley, and waveforms of “water” in different languages.
– Scientists hope any intelligent aliens who find the plate will understand humanity’s curiosity and wonder about our shared solar system. The plate serves both a scientific purpose of contacting potential life, but also an artistic one of conveying something universal about the human experience.
Source: Space
