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Vote for favorite name of NASA Mars Science Lab
William Atkins
Friday, 20 March 2009 02:45
Page 2 of 2
The student that submitted the name that wins will be invited to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California to sign the rover. In addition, “… all 30 student semi-finalists in the naming contest will have an opportunity to place an individually-tailored message on the chip.”
All names submitted at this website will be “… recorded on a microchip that will be carried on the car-sized robotic explorer.”
The NASA website, the same one as above, in order to submit your name is: http://marsrovername.jpl.nasa.gov.
The Mars Science Laboratory, soon to be named something much more personable, is scheduled to be launched the autumn of 2011, with a landing on the planet Mars in 2012.
NASA states, “… the rover will use a set of advanced science instruments to check whether the environment in a selected landing region ever has been favorable for supporting microbial life and preserving evidence of such life. The rover also will search for minerals that formed in the presence of water and look for chemical building blocks of life.”
The MSL is a joint effort of the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Russia, and Spain. All will supply instruments that will ride with the MSL rover to Mars.
The twin Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs)—Spirit and Opportunity—now on the surface of Mars are about one-third the size of this much bigger roving vehicle. Its series of instruments are the most advanced scientific instruments ever to travel to Mars.
Even Spirit and Opportunity started out with standard names. Spirit was originally called MER-A and Opportunity was called MER-B. Luckily a creative nine-year-old student came along and renamed them.
The MSL mission is expected to last about 668 Martian days (686 Earth days) but if it is like its MER counterparts, those two years could very likely extend much longer. The four-month original missions of Spirit and Opportunity have now extended past five years.
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