Second Microchip Gets Ready for Launch

Second dime-size microchip carrying 1.6 million names gets processed for installation onto the InSight lander.

Technicians at Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado installed a microchip with 1.6 million names submitted by the public to ride along with NASA's InSight mission to Mars. The chip was installed on Jan. 23, 2018. This joins another microchip that was previously installed that included 800,000 names for a grand total of 2.4 million names going to Mars as early as May 5, 2018.

The microchip including names from the NASA InSight mission's "Send Your Name to Mars" campaign was affixed to the spacecraft with a special glue.

JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the InSight Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space, Denver, built the spacecraft. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, which is managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

For more information about the mission, go to: https://mars.nasa.gov/insight.