Perseverance Mars Rover Named By Lake Braddock Student Launches

BURKE, VA — On Thursday, NASA sent its next rover to Mars, and it has a little piece of Burke, Virginia going with it. Earlier this year, Lake Braddock Secondary School student Alexander Mather was named as the winner to name the rover Perseverance.

The Perseverance rover began its journey to the red planet on Thursday, launching from a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. It is scheduled to land at the Jezero Crater on Mars in about seven months, or Feb. 18, 2021.

Mather was invited to the event and met key leaders involved with the launch as well as Vaneeza Rupani, the 11th grader who named Mars Helicopter Ingenuity.

Perseverance rover will search for signs of past microscopic life on Mars, explore the geology of the Jezero Crater landing site, and perform key technologies to help NASA prepare for future robotic and human exploration, according to a NASA news release. It will spend at least one Mars year there, or about 687 Earth days.

"Perseverance is going to make discoveries that cause us to rethink our questions about what Mars was like and how we understand it today," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at its headquarters. "As our instruments investigate rocks along an ancient lake bottom and select samples to return to Earth, we may very well be reaching back in time to get the information scientists need to say that life has existed elsewhere in the universe."

Mather, a rising eighth grader at Lake Braddock, was chosen as the winner of the "Name the Rover" essay contest among 28,000 entries from K-12 students around the U.S. He made the cut of 155 semifinalists and nine finalists, the latter of which was chosen by a public vote with over 770,000 responses decided the winner.

Here's part of his essay, which he read at NASA's naming announcement in March at Lake Braddock Secondary School:

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.

Other rovers named by school-age children have included Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity. Each name was selected after a nationwide contest.

For more about the Perseverance mission to Mars, visit mars.nasa.gov/mars2020.