How is NASA sending 10.9 million people to Mars, sort of?

NASA can’t actually send 10.9 million people to Mars, so it’s doing the next best thing. In the culmination of the agency’s “Send Your Name to Mars” campaign, NASA included the 10,932,295 names on its next Mars rover, Perseverance.

The campaign called for people around the globe to submit their names online by Sept. 30, 2019. Perseverance will carry all of the submitted names etched on computer chips when it launches for the Red Planet this July. There are three computer chips total, each about the size of a fingernail. The names, all 10,932,295 of them, were etched onto the chips using an electron beam. They were then mounted onto the rover on an anodized aluminum plate.

Perseverance, whose launch has not as of yet been delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic, is expected to reach Mars on Feb. 18, 2021, and land in the Jezero crater. The names, affixed to the aft crossbeam, will be visible via the cameras on the rover’s mast.