American space agency Nasa is launching the Europa Clipper Mission to Jupiter’s watery moon in October this year, and along with the spacecraft, it’s sending a unique message that has been recorded in Hindi and other languages.
The moon shows strong evidence of an ocean under its icy crust, with more than twice the amount of water of all of Earth’s oceans combined, and scientists have a message recorded and engraved on the spacecraft in 103 languages, including in Hindi.
The message is engraved on a 7 by 11-inch plate made from metal tantalum. The plate has graphic elements on both sides, which are recordings of the word water in over 100 languages spoken on Earth highlighting the planet’s connection to Europa.
Nasa said that linguists collected recordings of the word “water” spoken in 103 languages from around the world. The audio files were then converted into waveforms (visual representations of sound waves) and etched into the plate. The waveforms radiate out from a symbol representing the American Sign Language sign for “water.”
One of the waveforms on the plate reads “paani” the word water as pronounced in Hindi.
The message takes the idea from the golden record sent onboard the Voyager mission, which is travelling outside the Solar System in interstellar space.
“The content and design of Europa Clipper’s vault plate are swimming with meaning. The plate combines the best humanity has to offer across the universe – science, technology, education, art, and math. The message of connection through water, essential for all forms of life as we know it, perfectly illustrates Earth’s tie to this mysterious ocean world we are setting out to explore,” Lori Glaze, director of the Planetary Science Division said.
Apart from the linguistic plate, the spacecraft is also carrying an engraving of US Poet Laureate Ada Lim³n’s handwritten “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa,” along with a silicon microchip stencilled with more than 2.6 million names submitted by people from across the world.
Meanwhile, artwork on the inward-facing side of the plate includes a reference to the radio frequencies considered plausible for interstellar communication, symbolising how humanity uses this radio band to listen for messages from the cosmos.
Europa Clipper’s main science goal is to determine whether there are places below Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, that could support life.
Shambhu Kumar is a science communicator, making complex scientific topics accessible to all. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
