NASA walks back statement that humans will never visit Jupiter with apology

NASA has apologized and walked back the statement where it said humans will never visit Jupiter, which seemingly bothered a lot of netizens.

The source of the NASA apology can be traced back to a post from NASA 360, which wrote: "Is visiting Jupiter on your bucket list? Let's face facts, it's not going to happen". The post went on to promote NASA's "Message in a Bottle", which asks the public to submit their name to the space agency for a chance for it to be engraved on an uncrewed spacecraft that's headed to Jupiter's moon Europa next year.

Despite the logistical problems, along with the obvious facts such as Jupiter not even having a surface for humans to land on, netizens seemed to take extreme offense at the doubt insinuated by NASA's post. SpaceX intern Nathan Commissariat responded to the post and said, "NASA [is] really out here telling kids to stop dreaming and instead engrave their name on a tiny plate. There are so many better ways to have worded this."

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These responses were just some of what the post garnered over just a few hours of it being live, and NASA seemed to have been watching as the agency wrote, "Hey, folks - we goofed up. We want to be clear. We're always reaching for the stars (and planets and moons), and we want what we do to inspire you to do the same. Never stop dreaming!"

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