NASA Has Chosen a Name for the Mars 2020 Rover
NASA has selected a name for its Mars 2020 rover from the nine finalists: Endurance, Tenacity, Promise, Perseverance, Vision, Clarity, Ingenuity, Fortitude, and Courage.
Unfortunately, the name isn't Vision.
It's Perseverance. And it's expected to launch for Mars this summer.
NASA has unveiled the name of its Mars 2020 rover, and it's ...
... Drumroll, please ...
Perseverance.
Huh. Needless to say, we’re a little bit disappointed it’s not "Vision."
Students from Swaziland, Turkmenistan, and everywhere in between submitted over 28,000 names for consideration. Then, a panel of judges narrowed the list down to 155. On January 21, NASA released the top nine contenders—Endurance, Tenacity, Promise, Perseverance, Vision, Clarity, Ingenuity, Fortitude and Courage—and asked the public to choose. A total of 7,000 votes were cast.
"There has never exploration, there has never been making history without perseverance," says NASA Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate Thomas Zurbuchen.
This is what happens when the public decides.
Okay, so we're being a little bit dramatic. Perseverance isn't a bad submission by any means! As Dr. Z says, any rover that explores the unforgiving Martian terrain certainly needs to a hearty helping of perseverance.
Perseverance will join the ranks of an intrepid list of explorers. There's Opportunity, Spirit, Curiosity, and InSight, which is short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, as well as the Mars Global Surveyor, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (a total mouthful), and MAVEN, an acronym for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution.
The name was submitted by Alex Mather, a student at Lake Braddock secondary school in Burke, Virginia. Like the intrepid explorers that launched before it, the rover will be operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The next few years will be extremely busy on the Red Planet. In addition to Perseverance’s launch in July, the ESA-Roscosmos rover, Rosalind Franklin (ExoMars2020), which will hunt for past and current signs of life, is on schedule for a launch this summer. Both China and the United Arab Emirates plan to launch their Martian-bound spacecraft in July. That’s just in 2020 alone.
In 2022, the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology is aiming to launch a tiny microsatellite called TERahertz EXplorer toward Mars’s orbit. And in 2024, Japan’s space agency, JAXA, is planning to launch its Martian Moons eXploration mission, which will set off to sample Mars' moon, Phobos. India also has plans to explore the Martian orbit in the next few years.
Perseverance will undoubtedly make a number of incredible discoveries in the years to come, but in our heart of hearts, she’ll always be Vision.
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