Personalized Book Will Launch Kid's Name to Space Station in New Contest

Cover of "The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home"
A new contest, ending Wednesday (Sept. 23), promises to send the personalized book "The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home" to the International Space Station. (Image credit: Lost My Name)

A new personalized children's book will take a trip to the International Space Station bearing the name of one lucky child on Earth.

The book comes from Lost My Name, a company that sells "personalized entertainment" books in which a child's name can be printed as a part of the story. Lost My Name will send a copy of new book "The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home" (Lost My Name, 2015) to the space station on Dec. 3, aboard the Cygnus Orbital spacecraft.

Because each copy of the book can be personalized, U.S. and U.K. parents can submit their own children's names (and other information) into the contest. One lucky child will be picked to have his or her story rocketed into space. The contest is open between Sept. 17 and Sept. 23. [One Year in Space: Epic Space Station Mission in Photos]

"The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home follows a child and their robot friend on an amazing adventure from the depths of outer space to their own front door," a release about the event said. The contest can be accessed here: https://www.lostmy.name/books/thejourneyhome

"The personalization elements will ensure the experience is different for every child based upon where they actually live — from the country flag on the spaceship and the view of Earth from outer space, to seeing familiar pictures of key country, city and town locations as the adventure gets closer to its conclusion, where the child returns to their actual home address," the release said.

Lost My Name is best known for another book called "The Little Boy/Little Girl Who Lost His/Her Name," (Lost My Name, 2013) which sold more than 700,000 copies worldwide in the past two years.

The new book is part of a larger collaboration between astronauts and Story Time From Space, a project of the Global Space Education Foundation. The project sends books from children's authors to the space station for the astronauts to read and broadcast to kids. In April, Story Time ran a crowdfunding campaign (which did not reach its goal) to send basic science equipment to the space station and demonstrate child-focused experiments.

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Elizabeth Howell
Former Staff Writer, Spaceflight (July 2022-November 2024)

Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., was a staff writer in the spaceflight channel between 2022 and 2024 specializing in Canadian space news. She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years from 2012 to 2024. Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House, leading world coverage about a lost-and-found space tomato on the International Space Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working inside a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest book, "Why Am I Taller?" (ECW Press, 2022) is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams.