K-12 students in U.S. public, private, and home schools have until Nov. 1 to enter for a chance to baptize NASA’s Mars 2020 rover.
Submit your proposed name and a short essay (no more than 150 words) explaining why your title should be chosen.
Essays will be divided into three grade-level groups—K-4, 5-8, 9-12—and judged on appropriateness, significance, and originality of their moniker, as well as originality and quality of writing and/or finalist interview presentation.
Fifty-two semifinalists will be selected per group to represent their respective state or territory. From those, three finalists advance to the final round.
The public can then vote online for the nine contenders in January. NASA plans to announce the chosen name on Feb. 18—exactly one year before the rover is scheduled to land on the surface of Mars.
One grand prize winner will be invited to the July launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
“Just think about what it means to have something you named conducting history-making science,” according to a Jet Propulsion Laboratory press release.
Meet Clara
For Clara Ma, who named NASA’s Curiosity rover, the experience changed her life.
“I was really, really shy as a kid,” she said in a statement. “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.”
In 2008, then-12-year-old Ma was just starting to develop an interest in science. When she read about NASA’s essay contest to name the next Mars rover, she knew exactly what its title should be.
“Curiosity is the passion that drives us through our everyday lives,” Ma wrote in her winning essay. “We have become explorers and scientists with our need to ask questions and to wonder.”
Clara Ma, winner of the contest to name NASA’s Curiosity rover, in 2009 with an engineering model of the rover (left) and as a graduate student in 2019 (right) (via NASA/JPL-Caltech/Clara Ma)
The Curiosity launched in 2011, and remains hard at work on Mars.
More than a decade later, Ma has graduated with a degree in geophysics from Yale University; she is now completing a master’s degree in science, technology, and environmental policy at the University of Cambridge.
Rovey McRoverface
Part of a wider Mars Exploration Program, the currently unnamed machine is set for touchdown in February 2021 at Jezero Crater, where it will investigate Martian geology and collect samples of the Red Planet for return to Earth.
The kid-friendly naming contest—a Space Act Agreement partnership between NASA, Battelle Education, and Future Engineers—aims to engage students in the engineering and scientific work that makes space exploration possible and support national goals to stimulate interest in STEM.
U.S. residents 18 years or older (who are willing to give up about five hours of their time to review submissions) can register online to be a judge.
More on Geek.com:
- Send Your Name to Mars Aboard the 2020 Rover
- Planned Mars Rover Named After Female DNA Pioneer
- NASA Tests Mars 2020 Rover Prototype at Icelandic Lava Field
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