Nehaveigur

In a few days, the Europa Clipper spacecraft is going to launch towards Jupiter. After a journey of six years, it will arrive at Jupiter’s moon Europa, surveying it for signs of habitability. Europa is one of the few places in the solar system with liquid water and the most likely to harbor life outside Earth.

Continuing NASA’s tradition of carrying messages etched in metal, Europa Clipper will carry this poem by Ada Limón titled In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa.

Arching under the night sky inky 
with black expansiveness, we point 
to the planets we know, we 

pin quick wishes on stars. From earth, 
we read the sky as if it is an unerring book 
of the universe, expert and evident. 

Still, there are mysteries below our sky: 
the whale song, the songbird singing 
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree. 

We are creatures of constant awe, 
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom, 
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow. 

And it is not darkness that unites us, 
not the cold distance of space, but 
the offering of water, each drop of rain, 

each rivulet, each pulse, each vein. 
O second moon, we, too, are made 
of water, of vast and beckoning seas. 

We, too, are made of wonders, of great 
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds, 
of a need to call out through the dark.