{"id":659385,"date":"2026-08-27T14:40:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T14:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/659385\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T14:40:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T14:40:24","slug":"in-2018-nasa-sent-1137202-peoples-names-toward-the-sun-they-were-stored-on-a-memory-card-aboard-parker-solar-probe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/659385\/","title":{"rendered":"In 2018, NASA sent 1,137,202 people\u2019s names toward the Sun: They were stored on a memory card aboard Parker Solar Probe"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"InA total of 1,137,202 names were submitted and confirmed, then loaded onto a memory card installed on NASA\u2019s Parker Solar Probe before launch | Credit: NASA\/Johns Hopkins APL\/Ed Whitman and Wikimedia Commons NASA<\/a> invited people around the world to send their names toward the Sun aboard a spacecraft built to fly through its outer atmosphere in 2018. A total of 1,137,202 names were submitted and confirmed, then loaded onto a memory card installed on NASA\u2019s Parker Solar Probe before launch. The names were stored digitally on a small memory card attached to a plaque on the spacecraft, and the plaque also carried photographs of physicist Eugene Parker and a copy of his 1958 paper on the solar wind. The passenger list was part of a public participation campaign for one of NASA’s most ambitious solar missions. The spacecraft was designed to travel closer to the Sun than any previous human-made object and study the environment surrounding the star.\"parker<\/p>\n

A total of 1,137,202 names were submitted and confirmed, then loaded onto a memory card installed on NASA\u2019s Parker Solar Probe before launch | Credit: NASA\/Johns Hopkins APL\/Ed Whitman and Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n

More than 1.1 million names were collected in seven weeksNASA opened the name-submission campaign on March 6, 2018, and asked members of the public to join the Parker Solar Probe mission by sending their names to the Sun. Submissions closed on April 27 at 11:59 p.m. EDT. Over roughly seven and a half weeks, 1,137,202 names were submitted and confirmed. NASA<\/a> then placed the names on a memory card for the spacecraft.The card was installed on May 18, 2018, at the Astrotech processing facility in Titusville, Florida, near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. A NASA image from that day shows engineers working with the plaque that would carry the card. The plaque was more than a container for the names, since it was also a dedication to Eugene Parker, the physicist whose work on the solar wind helped shape the mission’s scientific purpose. Parker had proposed in 1958 that the Sun continuously releases a flow of charged particles and energy into space, and that stream became known as the solar wind. The spacecraft was named for him, making it the first NASA mission named after a living person.The names traveled with a spacecraft built for extreme conditionsThe Parker Solar Probe launched from Florida on August 12, 2018, aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket. Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory<\/a> designed and built the spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA. Its four scientific instrument suites were designed to measure magnetic fields, plasma and energetic particles, while another instrument would capture images of the solar wind and the Sun’s surrounding atmosphere.The spacecraft’s destination was the Sun’s corona, which is the outer atmosphere that extends millions of miles into space. Getting there required a spacecraft capable of handling conditions far more intense than those experienced by most planetary missions. Parker uses a thermal protection system to shield its instruments and spacecraft systems while the Sun-facing side is exposed to extreme heat. The mission was planned as a seven-year journey, with Parker making repeated passes around the Sun and gradually moving closer to the star. For the people whose names were stored on the memory card, that meant their digital signatures became part of a spacecraft designed to spend years traveling through the solar environment.\"parker<\/p>\n

Participants received a certificate after they confirmed their submission | NASA<\/p>\n

Parker eventually flew through the Sun’s atmosphereAn important milestone was reached in 2021, when Parker Solar Probe became the first spacecraft to fly through the Sun’s corona. NASA describes<\/a> the mission as active and says the spacecraft continues collecting measurements of the solar atmosphere. The probe has since made repeated close approaches to the Sun, and its most extreme passes have taken it to about 3.8 million miles from the solar surface, while it has reached speeds of roughly 430,000 miles per hour, faster than any human-made object.Parker had completed its 28th close approach by 2026. NASA reported that the spacecraft again reached the record distance of 3.8 million miles from the Sun during its June 8, 2026, encounter. Its systems were operating normally, and the spacecraft remained in its solar orbit. The science gathered during those passes is aimed at answering questions about the solar wind, the Sun’s atmosphere and the processes that drive solar activity. Those processes matter beyond the Sun itself because eruptions and other forms of solar activity can affect satellites, astronauts, communications systems and power infrastructure on Earth.The memory card carrying the 1,137,202 names is a much smaller part of the mission than its scientific instruments, but it remains physically attached to the spacecraft. Alongside the names are Eugene Parker’s photographs and his 1958 paper, which linked the public contribution to the scientific ideas that gave the mission its name. It began as a seven-week invitation in 2018 and therefore became a permanent part of a spacecraft that continues to circle the Sun. The names are not being transmitted individually to the star; they remain stored on the memory card as Parker Solar Probe continues its mission in the solar atmosphere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A total of 1,137,202 names were submitted and confirmed, then loaded onto a memory card installed on NASA\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[270],"tags":[18,278675,19,17,1024,17133,133,28633,451,8913],"class_list":["post-659385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-eire","tag-eugene-parker","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nasa","tag-parker-solar-probe","tag-science","tag-solar-wind","tag-space","tag-spacecraft"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117167996175312490","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}