My name is out of this world!

I remember a couple of times when my friends and I would Google up our own names and see if we were on the internet. Some of them found their names in blogs, class websites, and registration listings of random numbers. I however, found thousands of hits for "Martin de Leon" (which I think is really common among Spanish and Latin Americans), none of which was really MY name. I never found myself on the internet...not until tonight.

Apparently, my full name, along with my sister's, three cousins', my aunt's, my uncle's, and one million other people, was engraved on a microchip in a small spacecraft called Stardust. This spacecraft was launched in 1999 to take samples from a comet to be studied, and is scheduled to return to Earth in 2006. The names were placed on the microchip as a public outreach effort. "It allowed people to be personally involved with the STARDUST Mission and helps to promote public interest, awareness and support of the space program. It also provided a way to honor individuals by enabling them to be associated with mankind's most advanced technological endeavor and to be part of the quest of the human species to reach for the stars." (JPL, NASA)

Click here to see the list of names and here to learn more about the microchip and Stardust.

Finding my name was really cool, though I have no idea how my name was submitted there. Manay Candy, do you know anything about this?