# Help NASA Choose the Name For Its Next Mars Rover 👽

**URL:** <https://onehack.st/t/help-nasa-choose-the-name-for-its-next-mars-rover/67108>\
**Category:** News & Articles\
**Tags:** technology\
**Created:** [January 27, 2020, 2:36am UTC](https://onehack.st/t/help-nasa-choose-the-name-for-its-next-mars-rover/67108 "2020-01-27T02:36:01Z")\
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**Author:** ![TheJoker](https://onehack.st/user_avatar/onehack.st/thejoker/32/22660_2.png) [@TheJoker](https://onehack.st/u/TheJoker)\
**Post date:** [January 27, 2020, 2:36am UTC](https://onehack.st/t/help-nasa-choose-the-name-for-its-next-mars-rover/67108/1 "2020-01-27T02:36:01Z")

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NASA will launch a new rover to Mars this July — and 28,000 American schoolchildren wrote essays with suggestions for what NASA should _name_ it.

[![](https://mars.nasa.gov/imgs/mars2020/name-the-rover/NameTheNextMarsRover-web.jpg) ](https://mars.nasa.gov/imgs/mars2020/name-the-rover/NameTheNextMarsRover-web.jpg)

> _NASA has now selected the top nine finalists, which they’ll let the public vote on through Monday [on a special web page](https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/participate/name-the-rover/#Naming-Contest) where they’re also displaying the schoolchildren’s essays. “Scientists are tenacious,” wrote one student who [suggested the name Tenacity](https://www.futureengineers.org/nametherover/gallery/26909). "It is what keeps them thinking and experimenting… When scientists make mistakes they see what they did wrong and then try again._

`"If they didn't have tenacity, Mars rovers wouldn't be a thing."`

- The new rover will also be carrying the names of 10,932,295 earthlings, [etched onto a microchip](https://mars.nasa.gov/participate/send-your-name/mars2020/faq).

Bloomberg points out that because Mars and Earth are unusually close in July and August – a mere 39 million miles – another rover will also be launched [by the international ExoMars programme](https://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/what-comes-next-on-mars.html) (led by the European Space Agency and the Russian Roscosmos State Corporation), while the United Arab Emirates [will also try sending an orbiter to Mars](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-international-mars-exploration/), and China will deploy “an orbiter to circle the planet and a rover to land on it.”