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NASA’s Mars 2020 rover finally has a name: Perseverance. It was suggested by Alexander Mather, a secondary school student in Virginia, and beat out around 28,000 entries in a public contest for schoolchildren.

“Perseverance is a strong word: it’s about making progress despite obstacles,” said NASA’s Thomas Zurbuchen during the announcement of the winning name, adding that it represents humankind’s dedication to exploring space no matter how hard it is.

The rover is planned to launch aboard an Atlas V rocket in July 2020 and arrive on Mars in February 2021. It will carry a suite of scientific instruments, including ground-penetrating radar, spectrometers to measure the composition of the soil and several cameras to take both panoramic and close-up images of the Martian surface.

It will also have a small helicopter that will be the first heavier-than-air aircraft on another world, and a device to produce oxygen from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Both of these are technology demonstrations designed to make future exploration by both robots and humans easier and more efficient.

Perseverance’s mission has two goals. The first is to take scientific measurements that help us understand the past and present Martian environment and determine whether it could have ever hosted life. The second is to collect samples of Martian rocks and soil for a future mission to bring back to Earth.

That mission, another rover that is currently planned to launch in 2026, will pick up test tubes packed by Perseverance and bring them back to Earth, where we will be able to study pristine rocks and soil in more detail than we have before.

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