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William Shatner Wants You to Send Your Name to the Sun on NASA’s Historic Solar Probe (Video)

william shatner
Artist's illustration of NASA's Parker Solar Probe spacecraft approaching the sun. Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Your name could soon zoom through the sun’s superheated outer atmosphere, just like William Shatner’s.

The “Star Trek” actor has signed up to put his name on a microchip that will fly aboard NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which will launch on a historic sun-studying mission this summer. And he wants you to book a seat as well.

“The first-ever spacecraft to the sun, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, will launch this year on a course to orbit through the heat of our star’s corona, where temperatures are greater than 1 million degrees,” Shatner said in a new NASA video about this public-outreach effort. “The spacecraft will also carry my name to the sun, and your name, and the names of everyone who wants to join this voyage of extreme exploration.” [NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Mission in Pictures]

Your name could soon zoom through the sun’s superheated outer atmosphere, just like William Shatner’s.

The “Star Trek” actor has signed up to put his name on a microchip that will fly aboard NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which will launch on a historic sun-studying mission this summer. And he wants you to book a seat as well.

“The first-ever spacecraft to the sun, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, will launch this year on a course to orbit through the heat of our star’s corona, where temperatures are greater than 1 million degrees,” Shatner said in a new NASA video about this public-outreach effort. “The spacecraft will also carry my name to the sun, and your name, and the names of everyone who wants to join this voyage of extreme exploration.” [NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Mission in Pictures]

You can get your name on that chip for free by visiting the NASA “Hot Ticket” site through April 27.

The $1.5 billion Parker Solar Probe mission is scheduled to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 31. If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will perform 24 close flybys of the sun over the next seven years, at times getting within just 3.9 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) of the solar surface. That’s seven times closer than any other probe has ever gotten to the sun, NASA officials said.

[vc_btn title=”Continue reading” style=”outline” color=”black” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.space.com%2F39900-william-shatner-name-sun-parker-solar-probe.html||target:%20_blank|”][vc_message message_box_style=”outline” message_box_color=”black”]Space, excerpt posted on SouthFloridaReporter.com, Mar. 7, 2018[/vc_message]

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