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Naming a NASA Mars Rover Can Change Your Life Don't miss the
out-of-this-world opportunity to name NASA's next Mars rover: U.S. students in kindergarten through
12th grade, attending public, private or home schools, have only through
Nov. 1 to propose their name for the rover to be launched to Mars in 2020.
Just think
about what it means to have something you named conducting history-making
science on the Red Planet - or, if you are one of nine finalists, getting to meet
people who have spent their lives unraveling the mysteries of the specks of
light in our night sky.
For Clara Ma,
who won the naming contest for Curiosity, the NASA rover currently exploring
the Red Planet, the experience rocked her world.
"I was really,
really shy as a kid," Ma explained. "I didn't think my voice was
important. But after winning the naming contest, there was a lot of attention
on me - unlike anything I'd ever known. My life would not be the same if I hadn't
spoken up to articulate my thoughts."
Meet Clara
In 2008, Ma was
a 12-year-old sixth grader in a Kansas City suburb and was just starting to develop
an interest in science. She had recently entered her first science fair and
watched a movie about a journey from Earth to the far reaches of the universe. As
she looked up at the night sky above Lenexa, Kansas, her head practically
exploded thinking about the mysteries of the cosmos.
When Ma read a
magazine article about NASA's essay contest to name the next Mars rover, she
knew precisely which name to propose: "Curiosity is the passion that
drives us through our everyday lives," Ma wrote in her short essay. "We have become explorers and scientists with our
need to ask questions and to wonder."
She won the contest; the rover Curiosity launched in 2011 and is hard at work
today looking into whether ancient Mars ever had the right environmental
conditions to support life.
"The
experience of naming the rover and everything that came with it changed my
life," Ma said recently. One key part of the experience was getting to
speak with so many NASA scientists and engineers of different backgrounds; several
of them became longtime mentors.
"It was so
inspiring to meet people who were asking questions about the world and the
universe for a living," she said. "It made me realize that was
something I could do with my life: I could be a scientist, too."
Where is she
now?
Ma graduated
earlier this year with a degree in geophysics from Yale University. Her
coursework and research focused in particular on how Earth's atmosphere, oceans
and climate interact with one another. She is completing a master's degree in
science, technology and environmental policy at the University of Cambridge in
the U.K.
"Thinking about
sending a robot to another planet made me realize how special and fragile life
is on Earth," she said. "Space is incredibly vast. There are
trillions and trillions of planets out there. And yet we're still the only
place that we know of where life exists. I realized that studying the Earth was
the most important thing I could do."
Winning the
naming contest also gave her the confidence to tackle broad questions and reach
beyond the world she knew.
How does the
Mars 2020 naming contest work?
If you're a
K-12 student and want to propose a name for the rover that launches in 2020, visit:
https://go.nasa.gov/name2020
Semifinalists
will be chosen on Jan. 9, 2020, with finalists chosen on Jan. 20. The nine
finalists will be interviewed by an expert panel including Ma. The grand prize winner
will be announced on Feb. 18, 2020 - exactly one year before the rover will
land on Mars.
About the rovers
Every rover on
Mars has been named by a student - starting with the suitcase-size
Sojourner rover that landed in 1997. The soon-to-be-renamed Mars 2020 rover will
launch in July or August 2020. Equipped with a new suite of scientific
instruments, the rover aims to build upon Curiosity's discoveries about how
Mars was habitable in the past. Mars 2020 will search for signs of past
microbial life, characterize the planet's climate and geology and collect
samples for future return to Earth.
In this image, engineers test cameras on the top of the Mars 2020 rover's mast and front chassis. The image was taken on July 23, 2019, in the Spacecraft Assembly Facility's High Bay 1 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Full image and caption
Mars 2020 is
also part of a larger program that includes missions to the Moon as a way to
prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet. Charged with returning
astronauts to the Moon by 2024, NASA will establish a sustained human presence
on and around the Moon by 2028 through NASA's Artemis
lunar exploration plans.
NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages Mars 2020 rover
development and the Mars Science Laboratory mission, which includes Curiosity, for
NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. NASA's Launch Services
Program, based at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is responsible
for Mars 2020 launch management.
For
more information on Mars 2020, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/mars2020
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020
For
more about NASA's Curiosity Mars rover mission, visit:
https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/
https://nasa.gov/msl
For
more about NASA's Moon to Mars plans, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/topics/moon-to-mars
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