Poetry by American poet laureate Ada Limon headed for Jupiter

3 February 2023

Now if Australia had a poet laureate, which it will by 2025, perhaps their work would be winging its way through interplanetary space towards Jupiter. Instead, verse composed by American poet laureate Ada Limón, will be engraved on Europa Clipper, a NASA space probe scheduled for launch in October 2024, to study Europa, one of the giant planet’s largest moons.

The spacecraft is set to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in October 2024 and by 2030, it will be in orbit around the gas giant. It will conduct multiple flybys of Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, to gather detailed measurements and determine if the moon has conditions suitable for life. Europa is thought to contain a massive internal ocean and is considered one of the most promising habitable environments in our solar system, beyond Earth.