To infinity and ballad: Poet laureate, KY writer Ada Limón participating in NASA mission

As the old saying goes, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” But sometimes when you shoot for the moon you wind up somewhere around Jupiter, or at least that’s the case for U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón.

Limón, a Lexington writer who was appointed the 24th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry last year, is writing a new poem dedicated to NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, according to a press release from the Library of Congress (LOC).

The original poem, which has yet to be released, will be engraved on the Europa Clipper spacecraft as it travels 1.8 billion miles on its path to the Jupiter system.

In a video posted on the Library of Congress’ Twitter account, Jordan Evans, the project manager for the Europa Clipper, says NASA is “embarking on a first of its kind collaboration” with Limón for this mission.

The Europa Clipper is set to orbit around, and conduct multiple flybys of, Jupiter’s moon Europa. The moon is thought to contain a massive internal ocean and may be one of the most habitable environments in our solar system, beyond Earth.

“Water is such an essential element to us on Earth that it feels only natural to want to explore another place that holds so much mystery and so much water,” Limón says in the Twitter video.

More information about the new poem by Limón and how the public can get involved will be released this spring, according to the LOC press release.

Additional information about the Europa Clipper, which is currently under construction at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, and the overall mission can be found at europa.nasa.gov.

Europa Clipper is set to launch in October 2024.