NASA's Perseverance rover to take 10.9 million names along with it to Mars

NASA is all set to launch its Perseverance rover to Mars. Scheduled to launch this summer, the rover will take along with it the names of nearly 10.9 million people who earlier took part in the space organisation’s campaign aimed at sending names to the Red Planet. According to NASA, all the names have been stencilled into three microchips which also feature the selected essays from its 'Name the Rover contest'.

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The 'Send Your Name to Mars' campaign invited people around the world to submit their names which would ride aboard the agency's next rover to the Red Planet. The agency received nearly 10,932,295 entries which were then "stencilled by electron beam onto three fingernail-sized silicon chips, along with the essays of the 155 finalists in NASA's 'Name the Rover' contest". The chips were then attached to an aluminum plate on the rover at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 16. According to a statement by NASA, the launch of the rover has not been disrupted by COVID-19 outbreak. Perseverance will land at Mars’ Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021, according to the schedule. 

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Perseverance

The Perseverance rover is a robotic scientist weighing just under 2,300 pounds (1,043 kilograms). It is aimed at searching for signs of past microbial life, characterizing Mars' climate and geology, collecting samples for a future return to Earth, and help pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet.

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