A 4-year-old girl wrote to NASA and received a sweet response!
Cyrus Farivar and his 4-year-old daughter are very interested with outer space, including the icy moon of Jupiter, Europa.
The little girl showed her fascination in a short message to one of NASA’s scientists, writing: “Dear Dr David Williams My name is …., I was reading about Europa today with my Papa. We have a question for you: how can we help the Europa Clipper take nice pictures of my favorite icy moon? Love, ….., Age 4 & Cyrus Farivar (aka Papa), Age 36.”
People may think a big company like NASA wouldn’t have the time to reply to a 4-year-old girl, but Dr. Williams managed to send back a 2-page handwritten letter! Yes, handwritten!
“Thank you for writing. I’ve put in a picture of the Europa Clipper with Europa in the background and Jupiter behind it,” he wrote.
“This was done by an artist but the real thing should look a lot like this. Europa is one of the most interesting objects in the solar system, because even though it is very, very cold that far from the sun (about 300 degrees below zero!), Jupiter helps keep Europa warm.
“As Europa orbits around Jupiter, just like our Moon orbits the Earth, Jupiter is so big it actually has enough gravity to squeeze Europa so Europa goes back and forth.
“Its shape gets flatter, and then stretches out, and this makes a lot of heat inside, and is also probably why the surface ice is all cracked and has those orange lines.”
The letter added: “Inside, it may get warm enough to melt the ice and form an ocean of liquid water, so maybe things could live there. We don’t know, but we would like to find out. The Europa Clipper is our next step to explore Europa and find out what is under the ice.
“The Europa Clipper is still being planned, so there isn’t much we can do right not, but if you keep following the progress online you’ll know how it is coming along. I hope this helped, thank you again for writing-
“Your friend, Dave.” Wow, that was sweet!
The letter made this 4-year-old girl’s day!
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