CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The search is over.
After more than 28,000 students submitted essays to name NASA’s Mars rover, the name Perseverance came out on top.
The winning name came from a seventh-grader from Virginia named Alexander Mather. In his winning essay, Mather said he wanted to be a NASA engineer when he grows up. Mather said in the essay he became interested in space exploration after he went to a Space Camp in Alabama back in 2018.
NASA said more than 770,000 votes were cast by the public before Perseverance was named the winner.
The robotic explorer is set to launch from Cape Canaveral this summer. After liftoff, it will take about eight months for Perseverance to get to Mars.
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