A DVD will be attached to the MAVEN spacecraft for the journey to Mars.(Courtesy Lockheed Martin/LASP)

Want to go along for the ride aboard NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission?

Here’s a way without packing your bags.

The MAVEN Mars orbiter is being groomed for liftoff in November, 2013. It will carry with it selected art and haiku entries from the Going to Mars campaign, carried out by the University of Colorado Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP).

A DVD attached to MAVEN will also bear the names of tens of thousands of people who enter their names by September 10.

The MAVEN Going to Mars campaign began in spring 2013 to encourage the public to get aboard the mission.

The campaign is still accepting names, through a new log-in-free interface, until September 10. Name submissions will be included aboard the DVD along with the winning haiku and winning artwork from an earlier Student Artwork Contest.

To read the haiku and to submit your name to fly to Mars by September 10, please visit:

http://lasp.colorado.edu/maven/goingtomars

By Barbara David