How 1,38,898 Indians And I Got NASA's InSight Probe To Carry Our Names To Mars On A Coin-Chip

Before Elon Musk can realize his fantasy and step on the Red Planet, I have actually managed to airdrop my name on the surface of Mars -- with some help from NASA's InSight Lander, of course.

Not just me, a total of 1,38,899 Indians have successfully sent their names to Mars, along with over 2 million people from all over the world, earning a very rare set of bragging rights in the process.

NASA

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Before humans eventually step on the Red Planet, names of over 2.43 million people have already reached Mars engraved on a silicon chip. In the above pic, you can see a NASA engineer actually attaching the chip with all the names on to Mars InSight Lander.

According to NASA, 2,429,807 people from all over the world entered their names to be sent to Mars through the InSight Lander. Unsurprisingly, a sizable chunk of the names on that chip which is now on Mars are from India -- third only after United States (6,76,773 names) and China (2,62,752).

NASA

How did this come about?

Well, it all started with a NASA program from 2015, asking people to register their names on NASA's website. Not sure if I had filled my name in at the time or a bit later, but I definitely remember coming across a NASA tweet asking people to print their "Mars Boarding Pass" late last year.

Have you submitted your boarding pass to send your name to the Red Planet? You still have time to get to #Mars! >> https://t.co/tGqck2vTMY pic.twitter.com/FwOu4PA2Xk

¡ª NASA_SLS (@NASA_SLS) October 25, 2017

At the time, I think I missed the fact that NASA was actually going to laser etch the names of everyone who participates through an electron beam on a silicon wafer, where every letter being as tiny as one-thousandth the width of a human hair, and attach it to the Mars InSight Lander and send it to the Red Planet.

All of this sounded super cool, but that was that. I forgot about the whole thing, thinking it was all just a publicity stunt by NASA to get people excited about its InSight and Mars exploration missions. However, after recent events and InSight's successfully landing on Mars, I suddenly remembered and managed to retrieve my very own NASA Mars Boarding Pass.

NASA

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Here it is in all its glory. Never thought filling a random online form would actually lead to having my name sent to Mars -- it's a different matter that you'd probably need an electron microscope to read it, but still.

Of course, there's every chance that Elon Musk also dropped his name in the hat. In which case, we are name-neighbours on Mars, which is not so bad either.