A nonprofit organization called Explore Mars announced its plans to organize an activity where students get to send a Time Capsule to Mars.
The project hopes to send at least three small satellites to the Red Planet within the next five years. The small satellites, also called Cubesats, will reportedly carry images, videos and other forms of content from people around the world.
"We will make history by connecting humanity's shared experience with the first pioneers to walk on Mars," said Emily Briere, Time Capsule to Mars founder, mission director and Duke University senior student, in an Explore Mars news release. "This mission is bigger than any one university, one company, or one country. We have come together to unite and inspire humanity under one mission, as one race, in the spirit of global cooperation and peace as we collectively seek to colonize the first off-world planet."
The project costs $25 million, and if it comes to fruition, it would be the first privately funded mission to be sent to Mars and also the first mission carried out by students. It would also be the first project to use the new propulsion system and Cubesat at an interplanetary setting.
Funds for the mission will be gathered by crowdsourcing. The idea behind the fundraising was to ask for 99 cents every time someone sends a picture, audio, or video clips to be included in the project. People from developing countries who wish to send content could be sponsored by different corporations.
The mission aimed to get the participation of K-12 students. The students would be allowed to follow the path of the vehicle and watch it as it moves through space using a personalized "mission control" rooms.
The project's headquarters is based at the Space Propulsion Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and its staff includes experts from MIT, Stanford University, the University of Connecticut and Duke University. Different aerospace experts also expressed their support for the project.
