NASA Showcases Wild Europa Clipper Vault Plate With Inspirational Messages

NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, which aims to confirm there is a vast ocean beneath the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa, will carry on a legacy of the space agency’s spacecraft carrying inspirational messages from Earth, to celestial bodies throughout the Milky Way. The Europa spacecraft will join the likes of Pioneers 10 and 11, both of which carried small metal plaques that identified their time and place of origin for the possibility that alien lifeforms might come across them one day.

Europa Clipper is a robotic solar-powered spacecraft NASA built to conduct the first in-depth investigations into Jupiter’s moon Europa. It will orbit the giant gas planet and perform nearly 50 flybys of Europa, hoping to determine whether the icy moon harbors places below its surface that could support life. The spacecraft will also carry a vault plate, which will have a visual representation of the word water in 103 spoken languages, extending from a central symbol that represents the sign for water in American Sign Language.


The visual representations are the waveforms of audio recordings for the various words for water. Not to leave anyone out of the fun, NASA has made the waveforms available so that everyone can hear the word “water” in their native tongue, and share on social media to participate in celebrating the Europa Clippers’ upcoming journey.

Those wishing to partake in the online festivities can hear the word “water” in any of the 103 waveform translations, and are encouraged to share on social media using @EuropaClipper and #GoEuropaClipper handle and hashtag. If someone discovers the language they were looking for is not available, they can share which language on social media and use #GoEuropaClipper to let the space agency know.


Also on the reverse side of the vault plate is an engraving of US Poet Laureate Ada Limon’s poem “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa.” The engraving of the poem is in Limon’s own handwriting. It joins an engraving of the Drake Equation in astrophysicist and astrobiologist Frank Drake’s own handwriting, a representation of the term “water hole,” and a tribute to planetary scientist Ron Greeley. Also joining in on the journey are 2.6 million names in a cosmic message bottle.

Anyone wishing to hear the waveform generation of the word “water” in their native tongue and share it on social media can do so by visiting the space agency’s Europa Clipper’s Vault Plate webpage.