Your Photo on a Space Shuttle

NASA has promised that if you download a photo of your face to their Face in Space website, it will be placed on a space shuttle and flown to the International Space Station.

You can choose which of the last two space shuttle missions will carry your photo: Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-133, which will launch on September 16, or Space Shuttle Endeavour mission STS-134, which will launch in November.

STS-133 will deliver Robonaut 2, a robot assistant, to the ISS. It will also transport a cargo pod to the space station.

STS-134 will carry an instrument for searching for phenomena such as antimatter galaxies.

The most recent shuttle mission, STS-132, was Space Shuttle Atlantis' final mission.

After the space shuttle program ends, NASA will use commercial spacecraft to transport American cargo and American astronauts to the International Space Station.

NASA's new goal for human space exploration is to send human beings to an asteroid by 2025.

Once that goal is achieved, NASA hopes to send humans to Mars.

While Face in Space project is the first NASA project to allow people to send photographs into space, names and messages have been carried on other NASA spacecraft before.

Through the Student Signatures in Space project, space shuttles have been carrying the signatures of school children into space since 1997.

The Mars Rover placed a mini-DVD, which contains millions of names, on the North Pole of Mars in 2004.

In 2008, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took a microchip full of people's names to the Moon.

The Kepler telescope, which is looking for planets outside the Solar System, carries a DVD with names and messages.

Participants in Face in Space must be over 13 and cannot upload any content that is sexually explicit. NASA will remove any photos that violate its terms and conditions.