More than likely you will never get the chance to travel into space, but your name and a few well-chosen words can travel to the stars!

The Kepler Mission, NASA’s first exploration to detect Earth-like planets around solar-like stars, will launch from Kennedy Space Center in February 2009. After a 372-orbit around the Sun, the satellite will drift slowly away from the Earth, and in about 25 years it will be 300 million kilometers away from the Earth, and on its voyage to find other worlds that can sustain or already have life. Join the mission and submit your name and brief comment. Here’s what I submitted!

Our search for other planets that promise the opportunity to support life or already have life is a natural expansion of our being. As humans we are drawn to challenges, to the unknown, to the possible and the impossible. It is vital for us to explore space, and to do so in a spirit of cooperation and growth, not as a government, a military, or an industrial action, but as students with a classroom that expands into the cosmos and hold mysteries and lessons for eternity.

If we do not find life elsewhere in the universe, then we must re-evaluate our culture here on this very special planet. We must cease wars and choose to better ourselves, mentally, physically, and emotionally, because if we can discern no life out there, then we must spread and grow a healthy civilization throughout the galaxies, but with more care and wisdom than we have done with our home.

If we do find life in the universe, then it is incumbent upon us to respect and learn about that life. We must not think ourselves better than other life forms regardless of how strange or primitive they may seem. We must respect their habitats and learn from all the mistakes we made as we explored our own planet. We have the opportunity to do better, to do no harm.

I hope we are not alone in the cosmos. However, whichever way this story turns out, the people of Earth should take a collective deep breath and present ourselves to the cosmos as children who need to learn and as leaders who can inspire and cultivate life.