NASA is offering another opportunity to send your name into space (see this article on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission). The Kepler Mission is a telescope scheduled to launch in February 2009, and “will provide our first knowledge of Earth-like planets beyond our solar system,” according to Kepler Mission principal investigator William Borucki.
The Name in Space DVD also offers space for a message of up to 500 words on why you think the mission is important. The DVD will be mounted on the exterior of the spacecraft in November 2008. A video of the DVD being mounted on the spacecraft will be taken and posted on the Kepler Mission Website. A copy of the DVD with all of the names and messages will be given to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum. “It’s a way for the public to participate in our space program,” said deputy principal investigator David Koch.
The spacecraft will be launched into orbit around the Sun, not the Earth, with an orbital period of 372 days. The spacecraft will slowly drift away from the Earth, such that in about 25 years it will be half an Earth orbit away, 300 million kilometers distant from the Earth, passing behind the Sun as viewed from Earth.
To participate, see this page before 1 November 2008. This Name in Space program is “an international activity associated with the International Year of Astronomy 2009, in recognition of the 400th anniversary of Johannes Kepler’s publication of his first two laws of planetary motion.”