THIS WEEK @NASA: New Name For Next Mars Rover, New Space Station Resupply Mission
By Space Coast Daily // March 8, 2020
ABOVE VIDEO: A new name for our next Mars rover, a new space station resupply mission, and how you can join the Artemis Generation … a few of the stories to tell you about – This Week at NASA!
A New Name for Our Next Mars Rover
From a nationwide naming contest that saw more than 28,000 student essay entries, the new name of our next Mars rover is …
Thomas Zurbuchen / NASA Associate Administrator for Science:
“Perseverance … (applause)”
The new name for the rover formerly known as Mars 2020 was announced during a live event on March 5 from the Fairfax County, Virginia school of the student who submitted the winning entry.
Alex Mather, 7th Grader / Lake Braddock Secondary School, Burke, VA:
“If rovers are to be the qualities of us as a race, we missed the most important thing: perseverance. We are a species of explorers and we will meet many setbacks on the way to Mars. We, not as a nation, but as humans will not give up. The human race will always persevere into the future.”
The rover recently arrived at our Kennedy Space Center in Florida ahead of its launch to the Red Planet this summer.
SpaceX Launches Next Space Station Resupply Mission
On March 6, a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, packed with supplies and payloads for the crew aboard the International Space Station. The cargo delivery includes critical materials for science and research investigations on the station.
Application Process for New Artemis Astronauts Underway
We’re now accepting applications for our next group of Artemis Generation astronaut candidates. But even if you can’t be an astronaut, we can still use your support. We invite you to join the Artemis effort by printing your very own Artemis Generation Certificate at go.nasa.gov/joinartemis. It is our way of taking you with us on humanity’s greatest journey to explore our universe.
OSIRIS-REx Catches Unexpected Glimpse of Newly Discovered Black Hole
While making observations off the edge of asteroid Bennu, a student-built spectrometer onboard our OSIRIS-REx spacecraft unexpectedly detected X-ray activity 30 thousand light years in the distance. It turned out to be a newly flaring black hole that was discovered a week earlier by a telescope on the International Space Station. The glimpse of the X-ray event by OSIRIS-REx marks the first time such an outburst has been detected from interplanetary space.
Robots Autonomously Navigate Underground in Challenge
A team from our Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California was a first-place winner in a recent challenge to use cutting-edge technology to enable robots to autonomously navigate extreme underground environments. We could one day use robots with this technology to map out caves on the Moon or Mars, in preparation for the arrival of human explorers.
That’s what’s up this week @NASA
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