There is something special about watching a spacecraft leave Earth, even when I am watching from home. NASA's Virtual Guest Program turns that experience into something I can follow, learn from, and remember. Registered guests receive mission information, schedule updates, activities, and—after an event—a collectible stamp for a NASA Virtual Guest passport.
My passport now records five stamps from four missions: Europa Clipper, the launch and splashdown of Artemis II, NASA's SpaceX CRS-34 cargo mission, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. I have also received an invitation for SpaceX Crew-13, which is scheduled to launch in September 2026.
My Virtual Guest passport at a glance
- Europa Clipper: launch stamp received for the Oct. 14, 2024, mission.
- Artemis II: separate launch and splashdown stamps received in April 2026.
- NASA's SpaceX CRS-34: launch stamp received for the May 15, 2026, cargo mission.
- Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope: launch stamp received for the Aug. 30, 2026, mission.
- NASA's SpaceX Crew-13: invited as a Virtual Guest; the stamp is still to come after launch.
The most incredible keepsake: my name is flying through space!
My connection to Europa Clipper goes beyond a passport stamp. I joined NASA's Message in a Bottle campaign, which invited people around the world to sign their names to U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón's poem, In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa.
My name, Curtis, is now one of more than 2.6 million names stencilled onto a fingernail-sized silicon chip. The chip is attached to Europa Clipper's tantalum vault plate alongside the handwritten poem, artwork inspired by water, the Drake Equation, and other tributes to exploration.
My personalized NASA Message in a Bottle artwork—the keepsake confirming that Curtis Pokrant's name is flying aboard Europa Clipper.
Europa Clipper launched on Oct. 14, 2024. It is carrying my name on a 1.8-billion-mile journey to Jupiter's icy moon Europa. My name is really flying out in space!
The spacecraft is expected to reach Jupiter in April 2030 and make 49 close flybys of Europa. Its goal is not to find life directly, but to determine whether places beneath the moon's icy surface could have conditions suitable for life.
Europa Clipper Virtual Guest stamp: NASA, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Artemis II: from launch to splashdown
Artemis II was NASA's first crewed flight around the Moon in more than 50 years and the first crewed mission of the Artemis program. The SLS (Space Launch System) rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center at 6:35 p.m. EDT on April 1, 2026, carrying NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, aboard Orion.
Artemis II launch stamp: NASA, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The crew completed a 9-day, 1-hour, 32-minute lunar flyby mission before Orion splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on April 10. NASA sent Virtual Guests a second stamp after splashdown, making Artemis II the first mission in my collection represented by two stamps—one for leaving Earth and another for coming safely home.
Artemis II splashdown stamp: NASA, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Read the Artemis II mission overview.
NASA's SpaceX CRS-34: science and supplies for the space station
NASA's SpaceX CRS-34 was the company's 34th commercial resupply mission for NASA. A Falcon 9 launched the cargo-packed Dragon spacecraft from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 6:05 p.m. EDT on May 15, 2026.
Dragon carried nearly 6,500 pounds of research, supplies, and equipment to the International Space Station. Its cargo included investigations into microgravity simulation, bone-cell growth on a wood-based scaffold, changes to red blood cells and the spleen in space, charged particles around Earth, planet formation, and precise measurements of sunlight reflected by Earth and the Moon. Dragon docked with the station on May 17 and returned to Earth in June with scientific samples and hardware.
SpaceX CRS-34 Virtual Guest stamp: NASA, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Explore NASA's CRS-34 mission page.
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope: a new view of the universe
The newest stamp in my collection commemorates the launch of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Roman lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center at 7:26 a.m. EDT on Aug. 30, 2026.
The observatory is travelling roughly one million miles to the second Sun–Earth Lagrange point, or L2. Its 300-megapixel Wide Field Instrument will survey enormous areas of the infrared sky to investigate dark energy, dark matter, galaxies, and planets beyond our solar system. NASA says Roman is designed to survey the universe about a thousand times faster than Hubble while returning about 1.4 terabytes of data each day.
Roman Space Telescope Virtual Guest stamp: NASA. Read NASA's launch announcement.
Next on my guest list: NASA's SpaceX Crew-13
My next Virtual Guest invitation is for NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 mission, targeted to launch no earlier than Sept. 12, 2026. NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, CSA astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov are scheduled to fly aboard a SpaceX Dragon for a long-duration science expedition on the International Space Station.
Because the mission has not launched yet, this is an invitation rather than a completed entry in my passport. NASA issues Virtual Guest stamps after events, so the Crew-13 stamp is still pending. For now, the mission patch marks the next chapter in the collection.
SpaceX Crew-13 mission patch: public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Follow NASA's Crew-13 mission page.
A passport that keeps growing
These stamps are small pieces of artwork, but each one represents a real moment of exploration: a crew travelling around the Moon, cargo and experiments reaching an orbiting laboratory, a new telescope setting out to map the universe, and a spacecraft carrying millions of human names toward another ocean world.
The NASA Virtual Guest Program is free and open to people anywhere. I plan to keep following the missions, collecting the stamps, and adding new pages to my passport. Somewhere between Earth and Jupiter, my name is already continuing the journey.