It started with 28,000. NASA just narrowed it down to one. 

The next Mars rover, which has been going by Mars 2020, has a name: Perseverance. (We’re officially giving it the nickname “Percy.”) The space agency announced the winning name Thursday during a livestreamed event at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in California. Alexander Mather of Virginia, a middle-schooler, was behind the winning name.

Back in 2019, a naming contest brought in over 28,000 essays with name suggestions from K-12 students around the U.S. 

A hefty winnowing process with 4,700 volunteer judges eventually narrowed it down to nine finalists in January: Read more…

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