Lake Braddock Student Names NASA's Next Mars Rover

BURKE, VA — NASA's next rover to Mars will bear the mark of a local seventh grader when it is launched in summer 2020. Alexander Mather of Lake Braddock Secondary School chose the name Perseverance for the rover.

From Soujourner in 1997 to the Spirit and Opportunity rovers that landed on Mars in 2004, NASA has selected school-age children to name rovers through nationwide contests. Mather was chosen to pick the new rover's name in the latest "Name the Rover" essay contest, which drew 28,000 entries from K-12 students around the U.S. Volunteer judges selected 155 finalists, then nine finalists from the entries. A public vote with over 770,000 responses decided the winner.

The name announcement came at a Thursday ceremony at Lake Braddock Secondary School, where Mather read his winning essay.

Here's an excerpt from the essay:

Curiousity. Insight. Spirit. Opportunity. If you think about it, all of these names of past Mars rovers are qualities we possess as humans. We are always curious and seek opportunity. We have the spirit and insight to explore the moon, Mars and beyond. But if rovers are to be the qualities of us as a race, we missed the most important thing: perseverance.

"Alex's entry captured the spirit of exploration," said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate. "Like every exploration mission before, our rover is going to face challenges, and it's going to make amazing discoveries. It's already surmounted many obstacles to get us to the point where we are today — processing for launch."

Mather and his family will be invited to the launch of Perseverance this summer at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The anticipated launch window is between July 17 and Aug. 5. It is targeted to land on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021 and stay for an approximately 687-day mission. All of the 155 semifinalists' proposed rover names and essays were stenciled onto a silicon chip and will go to Mars with the rover.

Perseverance, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will look for indications of past microbial life, characterize the climate and geology of Mars and collect rock and dust samples for a future Mars Sample Return mission to Earth and help make way for human exploration of Mars.