MARS ROVER GETS NAME BEFORE LAUNCH IN JULY
FLA.» NASA’s next CAPE CANAVERAL,
Mars rover finally has a name.
Perseverance, a six-wheeled robotic explorer, will blast off this summer to collect Martian samples for eventual return to Earth.
The name was suggested by Alex Mather, a seventh-grader, as part of a naming contest for U.S. schoolchildren. The space agency announced it Thursday at Alex’s school in Burke, Va., and he read his winning essay live on NASA TV.
“We are a species of explorers, and we will meet many setbacks on the way to Mars. However, we can persevere,” Alex wrote. “We, not as a nation, but as humans, will not give up. The human race will always persevere into the future.”
NASA’s associate administrator for science missions, Thomas Zurbuchen, noted that the space agency’s Curiosity rover has been roaming around Mars since 2012, when Alex and his classmates were babies or little kids.
“Perseverance and curiosity together are what exploration is all about,” Zurbuchen said.
Nearly 4,700 volunteer judges narrowed a pool of 28,000 contest entries to 155 semifinalists. Once it was down to nine finalists, the public was invited to vote online. (The other eight finalists for the name were Clarity, Courage, Endurance, Fortitude, Ingenuity, Promise, Tenacity and Vision.)
Alex and his family won a trip to Cape Canaveral to watch Perseverance be launched into space. The boy became enamored with space exploration at age 11 while attending Space Camp in Huntsville, Ala. He said he wants to become an engineer and work for NASA.
Perseverance, built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is now at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for final preparations before it launches in July. The nameplate will be on the rover’s robot arm and serve as a protective rock guard.
Perseverance will carry a small helicopter that will fly short distances from the rover. Perseverance is scheduled to land on Mars next Feb. 18. NASA has landed four rovers on Mars successfully; no other country has done that.