Send your name to the sun aboard NASA's Parker Solar Probe

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NASA's Parker Solar Probe—designed, built and managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory—will launch in summer 2018 on a historic mission to the sun.

NASA is inviting people from around the world to submit their names online to go on a microchip aboard the spacecraft, which will be exposed to soaring temperatures as it plunges into the sun's corona to get the first close-up view of Earth's star.

"This probe will journey to a region humanity has never explored before," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "This mission will answer questions scientists have sought to uncover for more than six decades."

Name submissions will be accepted until April 27. More than 550,000 people have submitted their names thus far.