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[b]10.9 Million Names Now Aboard NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover[/b] NASA's "Send Your Name to Mars" campaign invited people around the world to submit their names to ride aboard the agency's next rover to the Red Planet. Some 10,932,295 people did just that. The names were stenciled 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 were attached to an aluminum plate on NASA's Perseverance Mars rover at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 16. Scheduled to launch this summer, Perseverance will land at Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. [i][b]Above[/b]: A placard commemorating NASA's "Send Your Name to Mars" campaign was installed on the Perseverance Mars rover on March 16, 2020, at Kennedy Space Center. Three silicon chips (upper left corner) were stenciled with 10,932,295 names and the essays from 155 finalists in NASA's "Name the Rover" contest.[/i] (NASA/JPL-Caltech) The three chips share space on the anodized plate with a laser-etched graphic depicting Earth and Mars joined by the star that gives light to both. While commemorating the rover that connects the two worlds, the simple illustration also pays tribute to the elegant line art of the plaques aboard the Pioneer spacecraft and golden records carried by Voyagers 1 and 2. Affixed to the center of the rover's aft crossbeam, the plate will be visible to cameras on Perseverance's mast. Currently, the coronavirus has not impacted the Mars Perseverance rover launch schedule. The installation was one of numerous recent activities performed by the Perseverance assembly, test and launch operations team. On March 21, the team began reconfiguring the rover so it can ride atop the Atlas V rocket. Steps included stowing the robotic arm, lowering and locking in place the remote sensing mast and high-gain antenna, and retracting its legs and wheels. [i][b]Above[/b]: Top center: The plate on the aft crossbeam of NASA's Mars Perseverance rover — seen here on March 16, 2020, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center — carries 10,932,295 names submitted by people during NASA's "Send Your Name to Mars" campaign and essays of the 155 finalists in the "Name the Rover" contest.[/i] (NASA/JPL-Caltech) The Perseverance rover is a robotic scientist weighing just under 2,300 pounds (1,043 kilograms). It will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize Mars' climate and geology, collect samples for future return to Earth, and help pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet.
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