Names of over one lakh Indians will be carried to Mars on a NASA spaceship that is slated for launch on May 5, 2018.
NASA had last month asked public to send their names to Mars and more than 1.6 million people signed up to have their names etched on a microchip that will be carried on NASA's upcoming InSight mission.
Along with these names, nearly 827,000 names that were collected in 2015 for a microchip that now sits on top of the robotic InSight lander.
Two microchips will in total carry 2,429,807 names. People who signed up for the mission can download their "boarding passes" from the NASA website.
Out of these 2,429,807 names, 1,38,899 are from India, a report in the Times of India said.
The list of names is topped by the US with 6,76,773 names followed by China with 2,62,752 names. India is at the third position behind the US and China.
The names of these participants will be etched on a silicon wafer microchip using an electron beam to form letters with lines one one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair. The microchip will then be attached to the top hull of the InSight lander.
According to NASA, InSight will be the first mission to look deep beneath the Martian surface, studying the planet's interior by listening for marsquakes.
"These quakes travel through geologic material at different speeds and give scientists a glimpse of the composition and structure of the planet's inside. The insights into how Mars formed will help us better understand how other rocky planets are created," NASA says on its mission page.
