NASA recently unveiled the design of the “Vault Plate” for the Europa Clipper spacecraft. The Europa Clipper mission, which will be launched in Oct 2024, will explore the ocean world Europa. The plate will carry inspirational messages from Earth for posterity following a NASA tradition of carrying such messages on deep space missions.
In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa
By U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón
Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we
pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,
we read the sky as if it is an unerring book
of the universe, expert and evident.
Still, there are mysteries below our sky:
the whale song, the songbird singing
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.
We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.
And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,
each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
O second moon, we, too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.
We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.
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