616,400 Signatures Taken to Saturn Aboard Cassini
LOS ANGELES (AP) — On “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” actor Patrick Stewart boldly traveled where no one had gone before. In real life, the signature of TV’s Capt. Jean-Luc Picard rocketed all the way to Saturn.
The signatures of Stewart and Chuck Norris were among 616,400 that were copied onto a DVD and placed aboard the Saturn probe Cassini by The Planetary Society, a group dedicated to advancing space exploration and the search for extraterrestrial life. Also included were the inked paw prints of a few dogs and cats.
Planetary Society officials solicited the signatures as a way to bring attention to the space mission.
Signatures were received from 81 countries, and the society spent months sorting, counting and scanning them at the request of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The project harkens back to the early days of space exploration, according to Charley Kohlhase, Cassini’s mission design manager and an adviser to The Planetary Society.
“A signature is just as unique as a fingerprint, and back in the 1950s, even when JPL was conducting just rocket launches, engineers would often write their names with a grease pencil somewhere on the skin of the vehicle or inside,” Kohlhase said.
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