NASA's new Mars rover finally has a name—and, yes, it's on Twitter
It started with 28,000. NASA just narrowed it down to one.
The next Mars rover, which has been going by Mars 2020, has a name: Perseverance. (We're officially giving it the nickname "Percy.") The space agency announced the winning name Thursday during a livestreamed event at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in California. Alexander Mather of Virginia, a middle-schooler, was behind the winning name.
Back in 2019, a naming contest brought in over 28,000 essays with name suggestions from K-12 students around the U.S.
A hefty winnowing process with 4,700 volunteer judges eventually narrowed it down to nine finalists in January:
Endurance, K-4, Oliver Jacobs of Virginia
Tenacity, K-4, Eamon Reilly of Pennsylvania
Promise, K-4, Amira Shanshiry of Massachusetts
Perseverance, 5-8, Alexander Mather of Virginia
Vision, 5-8, Hadley Green of Mississippi
Clarity, 5-8, Nora Benitez of California
Ingenuity, 9-12, Vaneeza Rupani of Alabama
Fortitude, 9-12, Anthony Yoon of Oklahoma
Courage, 9-12, Tori Gray of Louisiana
The winner, Perseverance, already has its own Twitter handle. (Let's hope it gets its own parody account too.)
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The previous Mars rover, Curiosity, was named in 2009 when Clara Ma, then in sixth grade, won an essay contest. Three other U.S. rovers have reached Mars: Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity.
Perseverance will launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in July. Alexander is invited to the send-off. In his essay, which Alexander read after winning the contest, he explained why he selected the name "Perseverance."
"We can persevere," he wrote. "The human race will always persevere into the future."
The rover formerly known as Mars 2020 is 2,300 pounds and is supposed to head to the Jezero Crater on Mars by early 2021.
NASA is planning for a human-crewed trip to the moon by 2024. The goal is for humans to eventually make it to the Red Planet.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
