NASA recently celebrated the successful launch of Europa Clipper, the largest interplanetary spacecraft it has ever built. On October 14, 2024, it blasted off from Kennedy Space Center, aiming to explore Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, which is believed to harbor the conditions suitable for life.
Among the crowd witnessing this monumental event was Ada Limón, the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. Limón made her mark during this historic launch by contributing her poem, "In Praise of Mystery," which is inscribed on the spacecraft's vault plate. This plate is engineered to endure the intense radiation near Jupiter, making Limón's words not just poetic expressions but physical sentiments sent across the cosmos.
With her poem, Limón wanted to capture the essence of humanity and the curiosity for exploration. The poem reflects our shared experiences on Earth and attempts to convey what it means to venture beyond our home planet. “Poetry is the language of mystery and the unknown,” she stated, emphasizing poetry's role as a bridge between imagination and exploration.
The collaboration between NASA and Limón began with a simple email from Bert Ulrich, NASA’s multimedia liaison, who proposed the idea of sending poetry to accompany the scientific mission. Over about five years, Europa Clipper will travel 1.8 billion miles, conducting numerous flybys to ascertain whether Europa's watery surface could support life. The team wanted to carry something personal from Earth, making Limón’s contribution symbolically significant.
Initially, the parameters for the poem were stringent. Limón was tasked with crafting something shorter than 200 words at a fourth-grade reading level, ideally laced with water imagery. While she initially struggled with these confines, often feeling overwhelmed by the scientific complexity of the project, she eventually found her inspiration by focusing on the wonder and beauty of life.
Limón's creative process saw her sifting through extensive NASA documents, which, paradoxically, complicated rather than clarified her mission. After several drafts and creative rejections, it was her husband who encouraged her to pursue her genuine voice rather than trying to write something purely scientific. This pivotal advice led her to pen the final piece, effectively capturing the broad themes of wonder, humanity, and the natural world.
“O second moon, we, too, are made of water, of vast and beckoning seas.” This line from the poem conveys the connection between Earth and the icy moon, noting the shared element of water, fundamental for life as we know it.
At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) this past early year, Limón had the chance to personally engrave her poem onto the craft’s vault plate. Her prior assumption was the verses would be encoded onto the spacecraft microprocessor, hidden away. Instead, realizing her words would be openly displayed on the vault plate was emotionally powerful for the poet. “The physicality of it astonished me,” Limón expressed, highlighting the weight behind her words and their significance on this exploratory mission.
The Europa Clipper, after years of planning and preparation, is now embarked on what could transform our knowledge of outer space and how we relate to it. With 49 planned flybys, this mission aims to explore the icy crust covering Europa, which may conceal vast oceans beneath its surface. Preliminary findings may indicate whether Europan conditions are suitable for life.
Limón’s poem is part of NASA's “Message in a Bottle” initiative, which collected over 2.6 million signatures to accompany her work. This initiative seeks to take the spirit of exploration to new heights and connect humanity’s sentiments with the cosmos.
The launch event itself was one for the books. Witnesses described the launch as thrilling and unpredictable. Following the countdown, the sight of the rocket lifting off and trailing smoke left spectators awestruck. Limón recounted her experience, saying, “At first, you don't hear anything. You see the explosion, then it hits you. It feels like the physical representation of the amount of work it takes to make such missions occur.”
Interestingly, Limón had initially intended to attend the Europa Clipper's launch on October 10. Still, Hurricane Milton disrupted these plans, forcing her and others involved to rethink how unpredictable nature can be, reminding everyone of our own planet's vulnerabilities.
The launch of the Europa Clipper is not only significant for science and exploration but also highlights how art can intersect with technology. This assimilation of science and poetry reflects the notion of shared human experience as we reach out to understand the limits of our universe. At the heart of this mission is the drive to expand our knowledge and, hopefully, bring back evidence of life from one of our celestial neighbors.
