NASA's Latest Mars Rover Has a Name (recap video)

NASA has chosen a name for its next Mars rover: Perseverance. The name was announced March 5, 2020, by Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington during a celebration at Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Virginia. Zurbuchen was on hand at the school to congratulate Alexander Mather, who submitted the winning entry to the agency’s "Name the Rover" essay contest, which received 28,000 entrants from K-12 students from every U.S. state and territory.

Perseverance is the latest in a long line of Red Planet rovers to be named by school-aged children, from Sojourner in 1997 to Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which landed on Mars in 2004, to Curiosity, which has been exploring Mars since 2012. In each case, the name was selected after a nationwide contest.

The launch period for Perseverance opens on July 17, 2020. The rover will land at Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021.



Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

[troydoesit]

I don’t think this will happen but if curiosity finds perseverance?

[aviduser]

Great name! Well thought out. Go Persey!

[coreytaylor]

that kid is really good at public speaking. congrats on a brilliant essay!

[lahcentamim]

Tankyou for your humanity building the future for next generation ..we are with you, we are in

[Tanav_]

I love the name, plus NASA is know for its perseverance 😄

[Destroyer]

Vision was the best name. 2020 Vision.

[abcdefgh]

Wow, it's huge! I always thought these rovers are much smaller, like a size of dog or something, how do they even manage to drag this thing to the Mars, it's enormous!:D

[Justin_Martin]

NASA 2020 Mars Rover perseverance is awesome 🇺🇸👑💕#NASA

[khyr]

Percy and Curio. Nice one. good selection. Pray for a successful landing.

[BigMilan]

Collecting a sample for future retrieval? By who or what?

[zeramino]

I was really expecting a more "fun" name. I feel like NASA made all this buzz to, in the end, choose a name they had already thought of.

[ayron-x]

Must be ironic if this explode after launch? Maybe we have to persevere more than imaginated... Or change the name too.

[conkerconk]

i havent read up much if anyone has samples of mars, but cant you guys make a sort of "mini rocket" that
the rover could put samples into and shoot it towards the earth, with a parachute, gps and stuff? tho its probably been tried before so eh

[vainimp]

Congrats Mather! Its always a pleasure to have another good tenor in our musical theater class

[phoule]

I voted for "Kid on Wheels". We're all kids on wheels.

[tommybtwo]

Something tells me NASA had some input in the boys script, LOL. The rover name though, they couldn't have chosen a simpler name? They seem to have chosen the name based
on the boys intellectuality with the announcement video in mind. It's going to sound strange hearing news presenters talking about the "Perseverance rover" because it's difficult
to pronounce compared to the other rovers. Curiosity made sense. This one should be called Vision (vision into past life and vision into the future where humans live on Mars).

[nataliakruglova]

It’s not a great think if we found aliens on mars
Actually maybe it will provocate the humanity apocalypse

[drraoulestradamdesq]

Now thy can find and bring opportunity home

[DanHowardMtl]

So it didn't end up Rovey McRovey?

[kimh]

Good they didn't let 4chan vote on it, then it would have been called: Rover McRoverFace or something like that 😁