On February 18, 2021, a car-sized robot will appear parachuted to the surface of Mars Start searching for traces of ancient life in RHen PRanette. Since that day, the landing site where NASA’s Perseverance spacecraft crashed became known as “Octavia E. Butler.” The name is named after her prolific science fiction writer who has spawned many famous titles such as: parable of the sower.
Ever since NASA began sending rovers to Mars, NASA has had a tradition of naming Martian terrain features. Their names range from Indiana Jones, Barnacle Bill, and Scooby-Doo to more formal names like Jezero Crater, a Bosnian town and Slavic word for “lake.”,” And Endurance is named after the ship that carried Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition. It turns out there is a method behind the space agency’s naming madness, after all.
NASA has given thousands of names to Martian craters and hills, as well as to every rock, pebble, and rocky surface encountered by the rover. “The number one reason we chose all these names is so that we can track what our team is discovering every day,” says Ashwin, project scientist for the Curiosity mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Mr. Vasavada said in his paper. statement. “Later we can refer to the names while discussing the many hills and rocks, and finally document our findings.”
Over 2,000 of these names have been approved by the International Astronomical Union (an unpopular group of scientists famous for downgrading Pluto to a dwarf planet) and are therefore considered official.Them Formal name It also follows a set of rules set by the IAU, for example, craters over 37 miles (60 kilometers) are named after famous scientists and science fiction writers, while smaller craters are named after less than 100,000 inhabitants. It is stipulated that it is named after a town. , according to NASA. Velva, an impact crater within Jezero, is currently being explored by the Perseverance rover and is named after a town in West Virginia.
Besides official names, NASA scientists creatively give informal nicknames to small features they encounter on Mars. The team behind NASA’s InSight mission has nicknamed the rocks thrown by the lander as it landed on Mars “Rolling Stones Rock.”
Nicknames aren’t necessarily meant for humor. curiosity probe The team named a hill on Mars after a colleague, Rafael Navarro González, who died in the blaze.video-19 complications.
The mission team may choose a theme for the Mars site and compile hundreds of nicknames related to that theme. The Curiosity rover is currently exploring a sulfate-rich region of Mars reminiscent of the Pacalaima Mountains, near the borders of Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana. As a result, the spacecraft team selected the first South American quadrant theme for the region. Meanwhile, the Perseverance spacecraft team chose a national park theme, choosing names such as the Rocky Mountain Quadrant, which includes the rock face area of Powell Peak.
Previous missions have adopted a more casual naming process, with the Sojourner mission (landing on Mars in 1997) using random names such as Cabbage Patch, Poptart, and Yogi Rock. Sure, it’s nice to have a system in place, but you’ll never forget where you last saw Yogi Rock on Mars.
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