Calling all space poets!

NASA is giving the public an opportunity to send a message to Mars aboard the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft (MAVEN).

The spacecraft, which is slated to launch this November, will bring along with it a DVD containing three haikus, along with the name of their authors as part of the Going To Mars project to publicize the spacecraft’s mission.

“The Going to Mars campaign offers people worldwide a way to make a personal connection to space, space exploration and science in general, and share in our excitement about the MAVEN mission,” Stephanie Renfrow, lead for the MAVEN Education and Public Outreach program at University of Colorado, Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, told NPR.

Along with ferrying the public’s haikus to the Red Planet, the spacecraft is being sent to investigate what caused the loss of Mars’ atmosphere and water. The probe will gather data about about the evolution of Mars’ climate to examine why the planet lost 99% of its atmosphere over millions of years.

The submission deadline for poetry is July 1, and the public will be able to vote for their favorites starting July 15. Just three haikus will be selected to join MAVEN on its Martian journey. The contest is open to “anyone on planet Earth” over 18. The poem must be three lines: five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second, and five again in the third.

We even tried our hand at one:

We’d love to see Mars
Meet all the little green men
Hope they are friendly…

Submit a haiku of your own to the slideshow below!

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• David Mattingly, NPR

  Mars, you planet red
  No life, just craters and ice
  Dark, dark, dark, dark, goose

• Eric Mack, CNET

  For its trip to Mars,
  NASA wants haikus like this,
  Why? Because it’s cool.

• Amina Khan, LA Times

  Rovers far below
  Spacecraft orbiting above
  A Martian family

Also on HuffPost:

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• Liftoff

  Viking 1 launches from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on August 20, 1975, bound for Mars. A twin spacecraft, Viking 2, followed about three weeks later.

• The Mission

  Each Viking spacecraft had two parts–an orbiter (top left) and lander (bottom left). After orbiting Mars and scouting for landing sites, the orbiter and lander would separate. Then the lander, protected from intense hear by an “aeroshell,” would parachute to a safe landing (right).

• In Mars Orbit

  This image from June 29, 1976, shows a 30 mile wide swath of Chryse Planitia dominated by Belz Crater. It’s known as a “rampant crater” because of the raised ridge around the inner layer of ejecta, material thrown out from a volcano or meteor impact.

• Landing

  Viking 1 touched down on July 20, 1976, seven years to the day after the first moon landing. Just minutes later, the lander took this photograph, the first picture ever taken in the surface of Mars.

• Stars And Stripes

  At left, the American flag is seen on the Viking 1 lander with the bicentennial symbol and Viking symbol below. At right, the six foot long rock known as “Big Joe” looms about 25 feet from the lander.

• First Color Image

  This is the first color image of the surface of Mars, snapped by Viking 1 the day after landing. The rocky wasteland, covered by iron oxide, at last provided an image to match the nickname “red planet.”

• In The Trenches

  Viking 1′s sampling arm created a number of deep trenches in the red planet’s soil as part of surface composition and biology experiments.

• The “Face”

  Meanwhile, the Viking 1 Orbiter continued to snap intriguing photos of the surface, like this photo from the Cydonia region that showed what many thought looked like a human face.

• The View From Orbit

  A Viking 1 Orbiter image from September 1976 shows debris flows east of the Hellas region. The image is about 174 miles across and the debris flows extend up to 12 miles from the source.

• Red Planet

  A global mosaic from 102 Viking 1 Orbiter images from February 1980 shows a full Martian hemisphere. The view represents what you would see from a spacecraft about 1500 miles high.

• Volcanic Trio

  A color mosaic from Viking 1′s Orbiter shows the eastern Tharsis region. At left, from top to bottom, are the three 15 mile high volcanic shields, Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Arsia Mons.

• Olympus Mons

  A color mosaic from Viking 1 shows the massive Olympus Mons volcano. The largest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons is about the same size (in area) as the state of Arizona, nearly 375 miles in diameter and 16 miles high. A crater 50 miles wide sits atop the summit.

• Chandor Chasma

  A color mosaic from both Viking Orbiters shows a part of Valles Marineris known as Chandor Chasma. The walls and floor show evidence of erosion.

  The Viking 2 Lander ended communications on April 11, 1980, and the Viking 1 Lander on November 13, 1982, after transmitting over 1400 images of the two sites. The Viking 2 Orbiter was powered down on July 25, 1978 after 706 orbits, and the Viking 1 Orbiter was powered down on August 17, 1980, after over 1400 orbits.

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/08/mars-haikus-maven-spacecraft-poems_n_3230456.html