NASA Will Send Your Tweets And Photos To A 1,760-Foot-Wide Asteroid

Now you can establish your social media presence in the final frontier, Armageddon-style.

by Zach Sokol

September 3, 2014, 5:20pm

An artist's rendering of OSIRIS-REx. Image Credit: NASA/Goddard

NASA is going to establish your social media brand in space. More specifically, the agency is crowdsourcing 50 tweets and 50 images from the public to be placed in a capsule and sent on a spacecraft aimed to land on the asteroid, Bennu. Though less dramatic, your Twitter presence could soon pull an Armageddon.

The spaceship, titled Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx), is expected to intercept Bennu in 2019 when it will collect a sample from the 1,760-foot rock before returning to Earth in 2023. NASA explained in a press release, "The mission also will contribute to NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and support the agency's efforts to understand the population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects and characterize those suitable for future asteroid exploration missions."

OSIRIS-REx's principal investigator Dante Lauretta stated, "I look forward to the public taking their best guess at what the next 10 years holds and then comparing their predictions with actual missions in development in 2023."

Bruce Betts—the director of science and technology at The Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and a public outreach partner on the asteroid mission—agreed, adding, "A time capsule capitalizes on the long duration of the mission to engage the public in thinking about space exploration -- where are we now, and where will we be." The submissions will eventually be on view at AsteroidMission.org.

This is the second time NASA attempted to get the public to participate in the OSIRIS-REx mission. In January, the agency asked the public to submit their names to be etched on a microchip aboard the spacecraft—though, clearly, having your witty Star Wars-related Tweets or #brunch photos sent up and above is a set up in terms of making your mark in the next frontier. The public can submit Tweets and images through September 30th by using the hashtag #AsteroidMission.