The next Mars rover finally has a name. A middle school student from Burke, Virginia came up with the winning suggestion.
No, it’s not Rovey McRoverface -- the rover formerly known as Mars 2020 is now called Perseverance.
Around 28,000 entries were received in a public essay contest, but ultimately 7th grader Alex Mather’s suggestion was selected:
“If rovers are to be the quality of us as a race, we missed the most important thing -- Perseverance,” Mather wrote in the winning essay.
The rover will scour the surface of the red planet looking for signs of past life on Mars and prepare samples for a future mission to send them back to Earth. Perseverance will launch from Cape Canaveral in July, arriving on the red planet February 2021.
