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1:21 pm UTC Apr. 10, 2021
A Black science fiction author who believed she could write better stories than those in B-grade movies, and a former NASA senior director who gazed at the stars while growing up in a remote part of Africa have been honored with Mars Perseverance sites named after them.
The names of
Jakob van Zyl, a brilliant engineer and manager who helped send spacecraft across the solar system, are now part of the Perseverance rover’s mission. Their names now designate where the rover landed and where it will watch the Ingenuity helicopter fly. There s a tradition for Mars rover teams to name their landing sites after someone they want to commemorate, says Kathryn Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist of the Mars 2020 rover mission.
NASA team uses Navajo language to name Mars land features seen in Perseverance rover images sent back from planet s surface
Navajo Nation granted the team permission to use a list of words from its language to name formations
Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez and Vice President Myron Lizer provided a list of words for the project Perseverance was translated to Ha ahóni in Navajo language
Rover s first scientific focus is a rock named Máaz – the Navajo word for Mars