Thursday, August 31, 2017

The ONE EARTH MESSAGE: Support Its Kickstarter Campaign!

Support the ONE EARTH MESSAGE on Kickstarter!
Click above to visit the One Earth Message Kickstarter site

Just thought I'd end this month by sharing the Kickstarter campaign link for the One Earth Message (OEM)...which aims to send a digital time capsule (akin to the Golden Records that have been flying on both Voyager probes for 40 years now) to the New Horizons spacecraft in 2020. Jon Lomberg, who was responsible for creating the Golden Records, is the architect behind this project. After New Horizons flies past its next target (Kuiper Belt Object 2014 MU69) on January 1, 2019, it will take at least another year for the spacecraft to transmit all of the data from that flyby back to Earth. Once every bit of the KBO info has been relayed to our home planet, the data recorders on New Horizons will be erased...thus clearing up space for something such as OEM to be installed in the robotic probe's computer.

An artist's concept of NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flying past 2014 MU69.
NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute

The campaign started last week...and ends on September 29, so donate now! The goal for this project is to make at least $72,000, but its Kickstarter campaign still has ways to go to reach it. If Mr. Lomberg or any other person on the OEM team is reading this, they need to add more rewards to the Kickstarter page to make this goal more attainable. OEM won't reach its $72,000 target based on $1 pledges ($5 should've been the lowest amount provided instead), and there should be a pledge amount between the $2,500 and $10,000 rewards to increase the chances of someone donating a large sum to this campaign (a pledge for $5,000 seems like the right amount to add). It would be awesome if there was a person or two (preferably five...the total number of $10,000 pledges that can be made to this project) to donate $10,000 each to OEM, but I wouldn't wait on that to happen! Prove me wrong, everyone.

The ONE EARTH MESSAGE would only take up space on a single microchip in New Horizon's computer.

So anyways folks, donate to the One Earth Message now! I keep repeating that because I totally want to see this project become a reality! Should the Kickstarter campaign succeed, then 2018 will be spent on developing the OEM website where people can suggest (or submit) what Earth-representative photo, message, etc. should be included with this digital time capsule. And sometime in 2019—should NASA hopefully approve the final product that Mr. Lomberg and his team churns out—the OEM will be tested and converted into the format necessary for a Deep Space Network radio antenna to transmit billions of miles to New Horizons in 2020. But all of this won't be possible without your help, folks, so donate now!

Help send a digital time capsule to the New Horizons spacecraft by supporting the ONE EARTH MESSAGE on Kickstarter!

PS: Your name will also be included in the One Earth Message if you donate to its Kickstarter campaign, so donate now! Thanks.

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