Ada Limon: A poem for Nasa
Follows US poet laureate Ada Limón as she crafts an original poem dedicated to Nasa’s Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter’s icy moon
In the Studio follows US poet laureate Ada Limón as she crafts an original poem dedicated to Nasa’s Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter’s icy moon. Her poem will be engraved on the Clipper spacecraft, which will launch in 2024 and travel 1.8 billion miles to reach Europa - a journey that will last six years.
We follow Ada’s creative process over several months, from her first meetings with the Nasa team, through many drafts of the poem and a visit to Nasa's jet propulsion laboratory in California to see the Europa Clipper under construction. In this update, we hear the finished poem.
Producer/presenter: Mair Bosworth
Executive producer: Stephen Hughes
(Photo: Ada Limon. Credit: Stacia Brady)
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NASA's Message in a Bottle for Europa

As part of the “Message in a Bottle” campaign, names received before midnight on 31st December 2003 will be stenciled onto a microchip, to accompany the original poem by Limón, titled “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa.”
To sign, read the poem and hear Limón read the poem in an animated video, go to:go.nasa.gov/MessageInABottle.
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