NASA invites public to contribute to Asteroid Mission Time Capsule

Time capsule leaves Earth for asteroid in 2016

NASA's OSIRIS-REx This is an artist's concept of NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft preparing to take a sample from asteroid Bennu. (Image Credit: NASA/Goddard)

By Brittany Harlow

The mission team will choose 50 tweets and 50 images about solar system exploration and predictions to be placed inside the capsule.

NASA says the capsule will be placed in the spacecraft Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx for short.  OSIRIS-REx will rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu in 2019, collect a sample and return the collection for detailed study ten years from now.

The chosen messages will be revealed when the capsule returns.

"Our progress in space exploration has been nothing short of amazing," says Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-Rex principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson. "I look forward to the public taking their best guess at what the next 10 years holds and then comparing their predictions with actual missions in development in 2023."

Submit your entries until September 30 by using the hashtag #AsteroidMission on Twitter and Instagram.

More information here.