NASA wants to put your face in space. No, really: Just in time for the last two space shuttle flights, NASA is offering to fly pictures of anyone who uploads a head shot on their Face in Space website to the International Space Station.

Face in Space follows a long tradition of spacecraft carrying personal touches out of Earth's gravity well. Since 1997, shuttle missions have carried elementary school students' signatures as part of an outreach project called Student Signatures in Space. The Cassini spacecraft brought a disk of signatures into orbit around Saturn. The Phoenix Mars Lander took DVD to Mars' north pole. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took a microchip to the moon. And the exoplanet-hunting Kepler telescope took a DVD full of names and messages to ET into orbit.

The Voyager I spacecraft's cargo was even more intimate: It carried a phonograph record containing recordings of a kiss, a mother's first words to her child and Carl Sagan's wife Ann Druyan's brainwaves, among other Earthly sounds.

But this is the first time the public has been invited to send their portrait into orbit. As long as you're older than 13, all you have to do is upload a photo (or, if you're camera shy, just enter your name) and choose which of the last two Space Shuttle missions you'd like to fly on. STS-133 will launch the Space Shuttle Discovery on September 16, and STS-134 will launch Endeavour in November. After the Shuttle returns, you can print out a "flight certificate" signed by the mission commander. (You can also follow the STS-134 commander on Twitter @ShuttleCDRKelly.)

In the meantime, check out this other bit of NASA promo hilarity: Space Your Face, where an animated astronaut with whatever picture you want in its helmet boogies on the moon or Mars. Educational? Iffy. Entertaining? Oh yes.

Image: NASA

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