By JOYELL NEVINS | Mission Times Courier
More than 28,000 entries. 155 semifinalists. Nine finalists chosen in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) international contest – and San Carlos’s Nora Benitez is one of those finalists.
Benitez is an eighth grader at St. Therese Academy. Her essay was featured on the online ballot for NASA’s “Name the Rover” competition this past month.
The Mars Rover will be launched from the Kennedy Space Center in July. It is the third robot NASA is sending to the planet Mars, but the first machine that is outfitted with a drill for coring samples from Martian rocks and soil.
In their mission overview video, NASA scientists noted that the samples will be taken from three spots that may have once hosted life: the floor of an ancient lake, a hot spring, and a site where hot water interacted with rocks in the shallow subsurface.
The rover robot is specifically designed to seek out “biosignatures,” or indications of ancient life. It will collect and store, or ‘cache,’ samples from rock. A second mission will be sent in the undetermined future to retrieve the Mars samples and bring them back to NASA’s laboratories on Earth.
“Mars 2020 is a pivotal mission in our search for life and could finally answer the age-old question, ‘Are we alone’?” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator science mission directorate.
But while the mission has a clear goal and set timeline, it still doesn’t have a name.
Getting ‘Clarity’
Fourteen-year-old Benitez shared that she has taken a liking to space since she was young, garnered from her mom’s interests and her dad taking her to the library. But that casual interest soared after a recent visit to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
“My love and interest grew astronomically after going to the laboratory,” Benitez quipped.
That particular lab is where the car-sized robot was built. During her tour, Benitez saw the Rover in progress in the “clean room.”
One of the tour guides noticed her curiosity and mentioned the contest: NASA was collecting essay entries choosing one-word names for the robot.
“I immediately started creating an essay in my head, going through names,” Benitez said.
She chose “clarity” after learning about the 23 different cameras the rover had, and the fact that it was launching in 2020.
“I figured that the people who designed the cameras would have wanted them, in comparison to a human eye, to have 20/20, or perfect vision,” Benitez explained, “I used 20/20 vision as a spinoff of the year 2020.”
In her essay entry, Benitez noted that “Clarity, when defined, means the quality of being easy to see or view, as with an image or vision. The Mars 2020 Rover, given its twenty-three cameras; nine for engineering, seven for scientific purposes, and seven for entry, landing, and descent, will help the people working on Earth get an amazingly clear view of Mars … we will be able to visualize Mars with complete Clarity.”
Her description was one of more than 28,000 essay submissions from K-12 students nationwide. Thousands of volunteer judges whittled the pool down to 155 semifinalists, and then again to nine choices. Aside from Clarity, the other finalists were Endurance, Promise, Tenacity, Perseverance, Vision, Courage, Ingenuity, and Fortitude.
“I was so excited and shocked,” Benitez recalled when she learned hers made the Top 9. “I was jumping up and down! I didn’t think I would make it this far in the contest, but I am really grateful for this amazing opportunity.”
Each name and essay was posted online, where anyone could read and vote on the winner.
772,237 votes were cast from all over the world — you can see a breakdown online of exactly how many votes came from each country in NASA’s public poll participation map. The number of votes per country ranged from one person to 24,664 votes, with the latter number being from Turkey. The United States itself provided more than 500,000 votes.
What’s next
Now, all Benitez can do is wait. NASA’s site explained it would “take into consideration” the poll results and will announce the essay winner in early March.
The winning essay will be published permanently on NASA’s website, and the winning student will be invited to see the spacecraft launch in July from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Either way, Benitez still has her sights set on working for those engineers one day.
“I would definitely love to work at NASA as an aerospace engineer or an astronomer,” Benitez declared. “I love learning about space, the galaxies, and the solar system, so working at NASA is my dream job!”
Even though the poll is closed, all nine essays are still available for perusal at go.nasa.gov/37dgUBS. There are also links to a Mars Rover timeline, facts, and where the robot is now.
— Freelance writer Joyell Nevins can be reached at [email protected]. You can also follow her blog Small World, Big God at swbgblog.wordpress.com.
