NASA is looking for poets who wish to be famous throughout the galaxy. With all of the recent hubbub about Mars and the various missions being developed to get us there sooner rather than later, it's no wonder that now you can even get a poem — a haiku, to be specific — sent to the Red Planet that has been fascinating mankind for so many centuries.
Seeking poets interested in sending their haikus to Mars stems from NASA's desire to gain more exposure for its Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft mission.
MAVEN will likely launch in November, according to NPR, which reported on the haiku/Mars project on Thursday, May 2, saying the craft will be studying Mars' upper atmosphere as a means of determining how the planet acquired its weather.
To have some fun with the MAVEN project, NASA invites the public to submit literary messages that will be kept on a DVD slipped into the craft. Three of the poets who submit will be chosen to have their poems on the DVD, but everyone who submits will have his or her name on the DVD.
"The Going to Mars campaign offers people worldwide a way to make a personal connection to space, space exploration and science in general, and share in our excitement about the MAVEN mission," said Stephanie Renfrow, lead for the MAVEN Education and Public Outreach program at University of Colorado at Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
"Everybody on planet Earth is welcome to participate," NASA says, though you do need to be over 18 to create a log-in (children are encouraged to ask parents/teachers for help), and all poems must be in English.
"The submission deadline is July 1, and starting July 15, the public will vote on the three winning poems to travel on the spacecraft's DVD," NPR reports. "The winners will be announced August 8. The poems will be accompanied on the MAVEN by some student artwork, selected by popular vote in a separate contest."
Leave your haikus in our comments below, too! We'd love to hear from you. Here's mine:
Mars is a planet
Mars is a chocolate bar, girl
I like Mars a lot
Like what you're reading? Follow @profklickberg.
