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!
From a nationwide naming contest that saw
more than 28,000 student essay entries, the
new name of our next Mars rover is …
“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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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 …
For more on these and other stories, follow
us on the web at nasa.gov/twan.
