BONTA actress/author/inventor/poetess and passionate space

 Embargoed until MAVEN successfully reaches Mars orbit.

Vanna Bonta, actress/author/inventor/poetess and passionate space advocate, wrote a haiku to ride on the MAVEN spacecraft that has just reached Mars.

Thirty-six million

miles of whispering welcome.

Mars, you called us home.

Ms. Bonta's haiku was voted in the top three of over 1000 submissions in the international Haiku to Mars contest. She was present at Cape Canaveral last November for the launch of the rocket carrying MAVEN. Ms. Bonta also invented the 2Suit for intimacy in weightless conditions. She tested it on the Zero G plane for the History Channel documentary, "Sex in Space" in 2008.

Unfortunately, Ms. Bonta passed away from this realm in July of this year. Her ashes will be sent into space aboard an upcoming Elysium Space memorial flight.